Victims of Sin

Emilio Fernandez's 1951 film is among the best known of Mexican cinema's cabaret melodramas. Ninon Sevilla plays a nightclub dancer who decides to raise a baby she finds in a rubbish bin. That decision costs her her job, her income and the whole world she moves in. Rather than delivering a moral, the film shows what work women were forced into and what that work cost them. The nightclub scenes function almost as documentary; Cuban and Mexican musicians enter the film with their own performances, putting the dance music of the period directly on record. The cinematography is by Gabriel Figueroa. The hard shadows and deep focus that became the signature of Mexican cinema are applied here to the nightclub and the streets around it. Ninon Sevilla's dance sequences carry the film's energy on their own. Who it's for: those who love the Mexican golden age and melodrama. Who it's not for: viewers who want to stay away from scenes of prostitution, violence and abuse of women; the film places them at the centre of its story.