Critics reviews

The earthy, magnetic star Ninón Sevilla burns up the floor with percussive, incendiary Afro-Cuban dancing, when she is not rescuing a baby abandoned in a trash can; battling vile, zoot-suited pachuco pimps; nobly enduring degradation as a prostitute and prison inmate; or tenderly mothering her adopted child.

Who could resist this? Not the Bologna audience, who burst into applause when, after slapping a child silly, said pimp got a quick and violent comeuppance. Of course the gorgeous cinematography of Gabriel Figueroa contributed a lot: One shot of a train blasting black smoke into the night would be enough to exalt a far less delirious movie.

The musical sequences — in particular Sevilla's dancing — are raw, beautiful, and riveting, harnessing the impulses that get our characters into trouble when they go beyond the confines of the dance floor.

Victims of Sin is gorgeously shot by the great Gabriel Figueroa, who captures murky neon-lit alleys, the luminous shimmer of bottles behind a bar, the dark rolling smoke of trains passing at twilight. The look is classically noir, but the film is in a kind of emotional 3D.