La mujer del puerto

From the very start, this movie is filled with striking cinematography, sharply drawn characters, and the promise of melodramatic riches, but it also exhibits a disconcerting lack of narrative drive.

Things happen, of course, and they surely must seem earthshaking to the characters involved (although the heroine seems a decade too old to be quite so naive about her cad of a boyfriend). But there's hardly any sense of dramatic tension, much less urgency. Indeed, the movie seems almost like an anthropological documentary, in which the camera spends much of its time dispassionately observing the behavior of ordinary folks at work and play, with little indication that the story is going anywhere in particular.

And then, with only minutes of running time to spare, out of the clear blue sky comes the (absurdly far-fetched) revelation that seals the protagonist's tragic fate.

There is much of interest here for students of film, or of the period of the Thirties, or of the movie's settings of town and port in Mexico. There's little psychological depth, though, and the most intriguing question about this "iconic" representative of the "film of sinners" genre is, What (aside from the boob shot) made such a seemingly dull story so compelling for the filmgoing public of its day?