RARE NOIR 3's opening "rumbera"...
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SUNDAY AUGUST 13 STARTS WITH NINON SEVILLA
Our schedule switcheroo with the 4-Star Theater was doubly fortuitous: the shifting of FRANCO-AMERICAN NOIR to August 11/12 (more news coming on that front soon…) provided an opportunity for us to reconfigure our film lineup for A RARE NOIR IS GOOD TO FIND 3, the latest of our forays into (take a deep breath…) “international-noir-that-is-not-from-France."
And, man, that’s all to the good when such a change provides a chance to start a series off with something much louder than a bang. Which is what will happen at noon on Sunday, August 13, when we lead off RARE NOIR 3 with the incomparable Ninon Sevilla as the eternally bedevilled Elena in AVENTURERA.
This is a film that was rediscovered for American audiences in 1995, and—as is all too often the case—then sunk under the radar again. Many Mexican film noir classics surfaced for aficionados on either side of the border in the 2010s, thanks to the Morelia Film Festival (and several variations of programming that followed under the auspices of the Film Noir Foundation), but amidst all of that, AVENTURERA continued to languish in limbo, apparently eclipsed by another Sevilla cabaretara vehicle, VICTIMAS DEL PECADO.
We’re extremely pleased to turn the tide on all of that by reviving what is arguably the seminal entry in a noir-melodrama-musical hybrid genre that really deserves a definitive festival of its own. (That said, too many of these films taken all together could send the audience down a rabbit hole with no return visa, so perhaps it’s best to approach this level of extremity one step at a time…)
For additional background, I’m pleased to reprint longtime Los Angeles Times arthouse film critic Kevin Thomas’ review of AVENTURERA when it was first revived for American audiences in 1995. Before I do that, however, let me remind all of you that pass sales for RARE NOIR 3 have commenced—all 13 films in the series (playing at the Roxie on August 13-19-20) for $75—and the PayPal link for purchasing them is right here. And now, with no further ado, here is Kevin Thomas:
Aventurera, a recently rediscovered 1950 Mexican musical melodrama, has it all: dizzying plot twists, extravagant production numbers, a film noir aura--and most important, Ninon Sevilla. In the 1940s and ‘50s, Sevilla—a Cuban singing and dancing sensation and a passionate actress—was Mexico’s foremost star of the cabareteras, movies primarily set against Mexico’s burgeoning night life. In Sevilla you find echoes of Carmen Miranda, Maria Montez and, in sheer versatility and great gams, Betty Grable.
There is no question that Aventurera is highly revealing of its postwar era, a time of social and economic upheaval similar to that in the United States. Although director Alberto Gout and his writers certainly do lay bare the hypocrisy and corruption of Mexican society at that time—and how!—clearly entertainment was always uppermost on their minds.
This is the kind of potent popular art that you can read lots into in retrospect, and the Mexican critics’ group that named it the fourth best Mexican film of all time in 1993 were truly carried away. In any event, the picture is at once a feminist’s delight, an outrageous camp treat and terrific example of crisp, professional filmmaking that has made all these meanings and pleasures possible. Supplying that shadowy film noir atmosphere in spades is cinematographer Alex Phillips, who photographed a goodly share of Mexico’s classic films.
Sevilla plays an upper-middle-class young woman in Chihuahua whose sheltered life collapses in an instant and who soon winds up shanghaied into a Ciudad Juarez brothel/nightclub where she’s expected to be a prostitute and B-girl as well as an entertainer. Myriad mind-boggling plot developments land Sevilla nightclub stardom in Mexico City and marriage into the highest level of society. But what of happiness and her shady past?
Amid wondrously kitschy production numbers, beautiful Alberto Dominguez songs, a haunting title tune by the maestro, Agustin Lara, and numerous important singers and musicians of the day in performance, Aventurera (“The Adventuress”) is, intentionally or otherwise, a timeless, universal commentary on the status of women, present as well as past.
A quick montage shows Sevilla being pawed over by men in all the humble jobs she takes and quits before ending up unemployed and broke, at which point she has a pivotal chance meeting with a casual acquaintance, a procurer and thief (Tito Junco), who looks like Errol Flynn as portrayed by Wayne Newton. The irony here is that her fate might have been no better and possibly even worse had she not crossed paths with him.
Similarly, there’s an example of sacrificial mother love carried to delirious extremes in Sevilla’s formidable mother-in-law (Andrea Palma, who has a mask-like Dietrich face). Yet for all this, Aventurera dares to suggest Sevilla’s plucky Elena can survive…and even prevail.
Thomas’ pronouncement about AVENTURERA’s feminist bonafides is still on the mark nearly seventy-five years since the film’s release. Despite its overheated extravagance, those who come see it will recognize issues that persist to this day in gender and class relations—even as the film takes us on a dizzying, zig-zag parade of plot upheavals that never let up.
In retrospect, it was simply silly of us NOT to think that we should kick off an international noir series with anything other than the most delirious noir ever made—all thanks to the combustible combination of Ninon Sevilla and director Alberto Gout, who tangled creatively over the film (with Sevilla winning more than she lost, by the way).
We sincerely hope that it won’t be another thirty years until AVENTURERA is screened again; but just to be sure, you’d best make plans to join us at noon on Sunday, August 13. And it’s OK, really, to trust us when we say that it’s just the beginning of our most remarkable international noir festival yet: so please feel free to dive in with both feet and purchase that all-festival pass (via the Pay-Pal link). You’ll thank us later…