Mujeres sacrificadas (1952) User Reviews

Psycho Ninón (contains mild spoiler)

[EdgarST · 5/10 · 17 February 2011]

After "Aventurera" (1950) and "Sensualidad" (1951) —considered the peaks in the careers of both Ninón Sevilla and Alberto Gout— the star and the director reunited again in 1952, but the results were not satisfactory, starting with the misleading title ("Self-sacrificing Women"). Considering that this time Gout tried harder, exploring psychological melodrama with a touch of the horror film, and within the confines of the rumbera sub-genre, it could have been called… "Satanique". The traditional elements are there, with slight variations from the "Aventurera" storyline: a young girl (Ninón) discovers that her mother (Anita Blanch) is not a «good» woman, and has to go the «cabaretera way», becoming (this time, at least) a successful international vedette, after she is offered a contract to perform on European stages. But she has killed Mario, her mother's procurer (shooting him straight on his right temple), and she is haunted by the frightening vision of a man in black, whose sinister eyes are the only features she can see. Ninón is always fun to watch in those stories in which she is literally redeemed through dancing, but in this one director Gout asked too much from her: the limits of her acting abilities were exposed, and scriptwriter José Carbó's simplistic, fake psychological approach —when she was young she was called «crazy» once, twice, so she has to fulfill her «destiny»—, or clichéd dialogues did not help. On the positive side, for the viewer's delight, if you care, Ninón does the rumba like no one else can, on large stages in Paris or within the confines of a seedy seaport cantina in Martinique.