AVENTURERA, Mexican musical, not rated, in Spanish with subtitles, The Screen (outdoor screening),
Lost for many years, the rediscovery in 1996 of this 1950 black-and-white film has revived interest in the
What, you’re probably asking, is that? Simple. The term describes a genre of Mexican musical films, beginning in the 1940s and achieving their peak of popularity around 1950, the year Alberto Gout’s was released. Most involve cabaret settings or big cabaret stars — in this case, Ninón Sevilla — doing rhumbas and performing flashy stage acts.
The nightclubs themselves embody a tug of war of good versus evil, as they were slick and shiny but full of sinister characters who inhabit the shadows. These films came into prominence after World War II, when Mexico enjoyed an economic boom that sent its rural population migrating into the cities. Sevilla, the greatest of the cabaretera stars, played a central role in popularizing the genre, actually choreographing many of her own dances. Born in 1929 in Cuba, she perfected her dancing style in the nightclubs of Havana before arriving in Mexico to launch her film career in 1946.
Critics hailed her as the High Priestess of the Cabarets. In 1955, Francois Truffaut declared, “Is Ninón dancing for glory? No way, never. It is quite clear Ninón is dancing for pleasure.” Perhaps it was hyperbole by the movie-crazed Frenchman, but he at least settled upon the right performer to praise.
No other screen dancer matches Sevilla’s ability to work up an erotic sweat. She’s been compared to Carmen Miranda, but Miranda was always more frivolous and flamboyant, the camera more focused on her tutti-frutti hats than her swaying hips. Sevilla’s sexual frisson bubbled up more intensely, usually achieving an explosive, epic climax. Blonde and leggy, she typically played a good girl led astray — a fallen woman wounded and abused by the men in her life, who were invariably criminals, cads, and perverts. If she ultimately became a bad girl, it was never a matter of choice, but a necessity to preserve her sanity and, often, her life. She was one of the silver screen’s first wave of true feminist heroines.
Sevilla made many cabareteras in the 1940s and ’50s, but two stand out — or The Adventuress, which probably best defined the genre, and Emilio Fernández’s Released the following year, in 1951, that film took the genre to new, wilder places, with its syncopated, sultry jazz and hints of Santería and devil worship.
co-written by Gout and adapted from a story by Álvaro Custodio, introduces Sevilla as Elena Tejero, a wholesome Chihuahua girl whose life falls apart after her mother runs off with a lover and her despondent father shoots himself in the head. Elena goes to Ciudad Juárez to find work as a secretary, but instead, she’s drugged and pimped out, awakening to discover herself held captive by the vindictive madam Rosaura (Andrea Palma). Elena’s boyfriend, El Guapo (Tito Junco), is the one who sold her out. He remains close at hand, trying to enlist her help with his petty thefts and bank robberies while persuading her that he’s her guardian angel.
Elena doesn’t stay in a daze forever. Soon, she is the star attraction of Rosaura’s Juárez nightclub. But her sweet disposition has vanished. Now, she’s plotting revenge against all those who conspired to bring her down. She not only wants to get even, she intends to demolish and destroy Rosaura, El Guapo, and as many of their friends, family members, and business associates as she can get her arms around.
This high-stakes melodrama resembles a feverpitched daydream. Characters might exit stage left, but sooner or later, they always return, upping the ante to make up for lost time. There are surprise setbacks galore, along with dank alleyways and erratic bursts of violence that are seemingly lifted from the film noir classics then popular in Hollywood.
But there are also grotesque, nightmarish figures that bring to mind the films of Luis Buñuel, the Spanish surrealist who was then working as an outcast in Mexico. One of the villains here, for instance, is Rengo, played by Miguel Inclán, who doubled as the tormented blind man in Buñuel’s that very same year.
Some reviewers knock the stage numbers, saying they are superfluous afterthoughts and not essential components to the story. That complaint seems a bit harsh. How better to depict Elena’s status as a (trashy B-girl) than to watch as she reacts to Pedro Vargas crooning the title tune, “Sell your love dearly, it’s the price of your past. And he who wants the honey from your lips must pay the price in diamonds for your sin.”
Besides Vargas and Sevilla, the film boasts appearances by many classic Mexican nightclub acts — Pérez Prado and His Orchestra, Ana María González, El Trio Los Panchos, Los Ángeles del Infierno, and Ray Montoya and His Orchestra. — Jon Bowman
A free outdoor screening of Aventurera is presented by the Santa Fe Arts Commission and Santa Fe Community College at The Screen, 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 17.