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Simply A Masterpiece

hyped garbage

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Nothing could possibly prepare you for this movie, which is actually several movies interwoven in one. The only thing you need concentrate on is the incandescent presence of Ninon Sevilla in the title role as Elena Tejero, first an obedient middle class daughter wearing horrid plaid dresses and retarded hairdos that suddenly falls into hard times and her work/career runs the gamut quickly from secretary/waitress to cabaret dancer/prostitute. This is a film you will never forget if only because the intense gesturing and posturing (there is no acting here) of Ninon Sevilla is too delicious for words, it needs to be seen, and several times, to be appreciated. I will summarize by stating that her first cabaret appearance is directly related to the "ritual oriental dance" that was a sleazy feature of adventure/film noir and even horror movies since the days of Pola Negri in "The Eyes of the Mummy", which I believe is the first one. The Oriental dance here is set in never-never Arabia, with polyester harem pants, for the girls, false beards for the lascivious men in the marketplace that tug at Ninon's curvaceous forms. Her outfit is not to be missed: A square box hat-turban combination, a necklace of many false karats and veils a plenty. Her orientalized movements are hilarious and jerky, but her sensuality and raw animal charisma comes through to save the day, and I am sure the appreciative male audience back then rewarded this performance with far more erections than laughter. But this is nothing compared to her "Tropical" number which will follow later. We first see Ninon in her dressing room nonchalantly supporting a headdress that consists of two full pineapples with branches and leaves on her head. Although she looks like a giant insect that has sprouted antenna, she acts and moves so convincingly as the "cabaretera" that we start to think this is normal, then she jumps into her elaborate Brazillian number, heavily influenced by Carmen Miranda and in the midst of a cloud of fog her headdress is transformed into a basket of bananas with foil accents that are just too divine for words. You can imagine that this flaming volcano of a dancer would naturally attract as a husband an ultra conservative, nerdish lawyer (Ruben Rojo as Mario Cervera) from one of "the best families in Guadalajara" which here in the States would have translated as a Republican from a Texas oil clan. He also happens to be the son of a the "evil" woman that owns the cabaret where Elena was transformed from studious secretary into dancing harlot. This middle aged woman character, Rosaura Cervera (played by Andrea Palma) is so outlandish, yet believable when one thinks that she anticipated the Mayflower Madam in Manhattan by almost half a century, that it deserves a study of its own, not to mention a seminar for split personality experts. Her demeanor and looks is that of a Latin Marlene Dietrich, cigarette holder included, and she is obviously Elena's nemesis. Their double entendre conversations from the moment they meet again as 'decent' women are the blueprint of drag queen competition dialogs, accompanied by a cavalcade of sudden tragic expressions, fits of fluttering from multi-leveled eye-lashes, twisting of the mouths into serpent-like lip acrobatics, all of which could turn plumbers into female impersonators if adequately imitated with patient study, which actually makes this film a true primer for drag studies. There are many more twists and turn to the story which includes a film-noir jewelry heist, the unbridled passion of an escaped criminal, a murderous, deformed, yet loyal friend of Elena's, and so much more excitement than this summary could possibly describe. An extraordinary creation of kitsch that anticipates Latin soap operas by a generation, this is a groundbreaking document of B cinema, film noir and gender studies.

Although they are often linked abroad, music and noir don't usually go together in Hollywood movies. Two exceptions are Anthony Mann's 1944 Minstrel Man and Gregory Ratoff's 1939 Rose of Washington Square in which Tyrone Power plays an even sleazier and less likable male lead than Tito Junco in Alberto Gout's celebrated Mexican noir melodrama, Aventurera (1950). At least Junco manages to stay on his feet, whereas Power not only runs out on and sells out the singing heroine (Alice Faye), but is deservedly beaten up by the comedian, as well as jumping bail and betraying his friends. He's not only a sneaky, repulsive, self-serving little rat like Junco, but he's cowardly as hell as well, which puts him one up on the Mexican "pretty boy". Like Rose, Aventurera is superbly photographed (by Alex Phillips) and also boasts a splendid gallery of supporting figures, led by Andrea Palmer's Joan Crawford-like madame and Miguel Inclan's remarkable Rengo who starts off as the most despicable criminal in the movie, yet becomes at the film's end by far the most sympathetic – and without changing his character! He's still just as hideously loathsome, but now we like him! A remarkable acting job by Miguel Inclan – and all in dumb show. He doesn't speak a word. And as for the lavish staging of the musical numbers, Aventurera easily gets the nod. Albert Ketelbey's "In a Persian Market" receives a truly rousing treatment not only from the orchestra and dancer-choreographer-heroine Ninon Sevilla, but from veteran film editor, Alfredo Rosas Priego (no less than 240 movies, would you believe?). As for Senorita Sevilla, she is nothing short of marvelous. (The film is available on two good DVDs, but the unsubtitled release has far better sound).

This is a gas.Its Mexican, and in the Spanish tradition that everything goes: all sorts of narrative devices and all sorts of plot types are sliced and diced and served in a sort of salsa that makes sense.Its old fashioned floor show musical, but sexier. Its old fashioned noir, but with more unlikely circumstance than usual. Its soap opera with more overt mugging than on daytime TeeVee. Its justice, and romance and white slavery. And it works, which is the miracle that is the most attractive.The noir elements are in the simple plot: girl on the street gets sold into slavery to a woman whose rich son she subsequently marries out of spite — and then falls in love with him. Emotional blackmail of the deepest, blackest kind as turnabout for sexual villainy of the blackest kind.The strange thing is that they clearly designed the thing so that the musical numbers are the most attractive. Our innocent daughter is in her enforced sex slave mode when we first see them and we are supposed to ogle the same as the smarmy men who gather around and reach for her. Later, even after she does not have to, she reverts to this, the implication being that the sexual beast has been irreversibly unleashed.But that's just what attracted the millionaire son, right? That raw, innocent sex? And that's what is supposed to attract us.I guess its okay, if you are a Mexican audience, because she's Cuban, and therefore relatively wild in that way.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

The best known in a series of lurid "Rumbera" films, a genre peculiar to Mexican Cinema which combines noir and musical numbers, and usually takes place in the underworld of nightclubs and gangsters. Starring Cuban actress Ninón Sevilla and directed by Alberto Gout who directed her in other similar films with names such as "Perdida" and "Sensualidad". Over the top photography and acting has to be seen to be believed. The image of the star in her "pineapple hat" is memorable. A campy stage show was created in the 1990's based on the film and is still running today in Mexico City. The great Andrea Palma appears in her later, matronly, manifestation as the "madam".