Feature film
The Woman of the Port
La mujer del puerto
Arcady Boytler · 1934
Synopsis
Rosario, a young woman of modest means from Córdoba, in the state of Veracruz, loses her father and discovers that her fiancé is cheating on her. Alone and without resources, she leaves her town for the port of Veracruz, facing the Gulf of Mexico, and becomes a prostitute in a cabaret there, where one hears the song of the women who “sell pleasure to the men who come from the sea”. One night, a sailor named Alberto takes her side against a violent customer.
Context
The film is based on Maupassant's short story “Le Port”, with a screenplay by Antonio Guzmán Aguilera and Raphael J. Sevilla, who also handles the technical direction; Alex Phillips signed the cinematography. Shot in 1933 at the México Films studios, it was released on 14 February 1934 at the Regis cinema. It is seen as a mixture of German expressionism and Soviet montage. It was remade in 1949 and in 1991, by Arturo Ripstein; the Filmoteca of the national university restored it in 2014.
Who it is for
A seventy-six-minute melodrama in Spanish, with dated sound, that can be watched without preparation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a masterpiece of the early years of Mexican sound cinema, which opens the golden age of melodrama; ranked among the hundred best films of the country.
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