Las Mujeres del Puerto

French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Port” first landed on the Mexican silver-screen in 1934, courtesy of Russian exile Arkady Boytler and his directing buddy Raphael J. Sevilla. This classic tale of twisted faith has since been adapted thrice over — although, we’ll leave Luis Quintanilla’s TV-adaptation for another summer — and become a cornerstone of Mexican cinema, its tale of mixed identities reflecting the status of a nation confused about its own.

Now heralded as a classic of Latin American cinema, Boytler and Sevilla’s grim and pointed THE WOMAN OF THE PORT (1934) sets the standard high for all future filmmakers looking to adapt this powerful short story. Set in the docks of Veracruz, THE WOMAN OF THE PORT follows a woman frowned upon by fate, forced into squalor, and made to make a name for herself in infamy. In 1949, Emilio Gómez Muriel tried his hand at the story with an adaptation starring rumbera Maria Antonieta Pons. This version of THE WOMAN OF THE PORT (1949) flips the chronology of the first on its head, setting up a narrative parabola that moves from grime to good to ghastly. It’d take about 40 years for another filmmaker to throw his name in the hat and in 1991, former Luis Buñuel assistant director Arturo Ripstein put forth his own spin on the story: a Rashomon–style vision of despair anchored in a quartet of wonderful performances.