Victims of Sin
Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title: Victimas del pecado
Date: January 01, 1951 to December 31, 1951
Dates Note: 1951
Country of Origin:
Mexico
Place of Origin: Mexico
Languages:
Spanish
Color: B&W
Silent: No
Based On:
Additional Info:
<i>Victims of Sin</i> was fully restored in 4K from the original 35mm nitrate camera negative, which had been damaged from mishandling over the decades, by Peter Conheim (Cinema Preservation Alliance/USA) and Viviana Garcia-Besné (Permanencia Voluntaria/Mexico). Permanencia Voluntaria and Cinema Preservation Alliance coproduced the preservation effort with further assistance from IMCINE and the Academy Film Archive, bringing <i>Victims of Sin</i> back to the screen with a clarity and depth not seen since its original release.
Curator Notes
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Special ScreeningsDescription:
Classic Mexican melodrama shows us that the excesses of Luis Buñuel and Arturo Ripstein did not come out of nowhere. Victims of Sin is a tour de force for Ninón Sevilla, a rumba dancer and, incidentally, an over-the-top actress. She portrays a cabaret dancer trying to raise an abandoned kid and forced into prostitution. “Victims of the Social Structure” doesn’t make a very good title, but that’s what it’s all about—albeit exploited to the point of high camp—in the entertaining film musicals known as rumberas. Rodolfo Acosta is Sevilla’s zoot-suited artistic director/pimp (a jerk, but what a dancer!), while Tito Junco as her enigmatic would-be savior walks the streets with his sorrows and ever-present mariachi sounds in tow. With all this, plus the rhythms of Perez Prado and urban chanteuse Rita Montaner, Gabriel Figueroa’s fabulous framing and lighting in a film noir vein are like the icing on the little brat’s cake.
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