Distinto Amanecer aka Another Dawn (1943) Mexican "Cabaretera" Noir

"It just might be Mexico's first Film Noir." 

Directed by Julio Bracho. Witten by Max Aub, Julio Bracho, and Xavier Villaurrutia (dialogue) and based of Max Aub's play "La vida conyugal" Excellent Cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa and Music by Raúl Lavista.

Stars: Andrea Palma as Julieta, Pedro Armendáriz as Octavio, Alberto Galán as Ignacio Elizalde, Narciso Busquets as Juanito, Octavio Martínez as the man in black Jorge Ruiz. With Beatriz Ramos, Paco Fuentes, Felipe Montoya, Enrique Uthoff, Maruja Grifell, Manuel Arvide, Lucila Bowling, Manuel Dondé.

Mexican Cinema dates from around the turn of the 20th century, President Porfirio Díaz recognized it's importance and was filmed in many newsreels.  Salvador Toscano Barragán, who introduced newsreels in Mexico made the country's first film with a plot in 1898. The first fiction film was created in Mexico around 1906. 

The Story

Mexico City. The Colonia Dell la Valle Coyoacan Bus. Octavio. Sharp dressed. Wearing a fedora and a pinstriped suit. Railroad Union Activist. Agent, carrying incriminating evidence. On the run. 

He's nervously reading an evening newspaper article about the earlier assassination attempt on him and a another union leader, Armando Ruelas, at the Post Office. He was a partner agent of Octavio. The assassins missed him. 

Pedro Armendáriz as Octavio

Octavio Martínez as the man in black Jorge Ruiz

He notices a stranger staring at him. The man is dressed in black he's somewhere along a sliding scale between character in a Zapata Western and Boris Badenov. Black fedora. Black shades. Black tie. Black trench coat. Jorge Ruiz. A weasel.

Octavio hops off the bus at the next stop. He takes off down the street. Octavio slowly walks and watches to see if he is being tailed. Yes. The man in black follows. 

Octavio heads into a crowded movie theater playing "Eyes In The Night." Looks for an empty seat and slides into one next to a women. The man in black is now walking down the center aisle. The woman is Julieta. 

Andrea Palma as Julieta

She takes out a cigarette and tries to light it. That match flare will not only attract the man in black's attention but light up Octavio's face. Octavio blows out the match. Julieta asks him "What gives him the right?" Octavio points to a no smoking sign. Julieta says "So what." Octavio tells her that she has to follow the sign. Julieta turns her head the other way and replies "All of them?" Octavio replies "All of them." Julieta points to a Smoke Monte Carlo ad and lights up.

Julieta next gets up and heads out to the center aisle, Octavio follows going the opposite way thinking possibly that Ruiz was down front. But Octavio finds Ruiz now out guarding the exit to the lobby. 

So Octavio slides along the wall and slips into the nearest door. It's the ladies room. Julieta is inside. What follows is a meet cute between Octavio and his old college flame Julieta. 

They hug. Octavio tells her that "they" the ones that shot Ruelas are after him also. He also explains that he has to pick up an envelope of incriminating evidence that proves Governor Vidal sold their strike to a foreign company. It was mailed to a P.O. box for safe keeping. He is here to pick it up.

Meanwhile Ruiz makes a phone call to tell his boss that he has Octavio cornered in a ladies room and to send the boys over. 

Julieta decides to help Octavio so she slips out the ladies room. She spots the man in black that Octavio warned her about. She walks to the security exit and leaves the theater and opens the outside latched alley exit of the ladies room. They both slip down an alley to the street and into a taxi.

During the taxi ride Julieta tells Octavio that he hasn't changed. Julieta says to him that he achieved all his goals and dreams and that he must be happy. He says yes. Octavio tells Julieta that she hasn't changed either. But she tells Octavio that she has changed. 

Octavio assumes she means that she's married. But Julieta goes into a sob story about how Ignacio lost his job three years ago and is barely working writing occasionally for a newspaper. Like Hollywood Noir under the production code the living arrangements are left vague. (We'll interpret the clues later)

Julieta invites Octavio to their place. It's a flop in a tenement apartment complex in Flores Alley next to a Chinese diner at the edge of Barrio Chino. 

Octavio is a bit surprised, Julieta is a bit embarrassed. Ignacio is delighted to see his old college buddy. Julieta leaves them to reminiscing while she goes to start dinner. She is out of bread though, and tells the boys that she will be right back and she heads back down the stairs to go to the Café Chop Suey. 

But right across from the bottom of the stairway stands the man in black. He is staring at her. She heads off to the Café. She buys 30 centavos worth of scones with Ruiz standing right beside her and runs back to the flop announcing to Octavio and Ignacio that the man in black is here. Julieta tells Octavio to hide on their roof terrace. 

Soon the man in black is knocking on the door claiming to be an inspector for the department of energy. Ignacio lets him in. He goes to the meter first, then walks around the rooms asking about how many light bulbs etc., etc. 

He deduces that Octavio must be hiding on the roof terrace. As soon as he's out of the flop he calls his boss again and tells the details. The boss with send men to apartment 12 but tells Ruiz to stakeout the post office with Barrios. 

Octavio explains to Ignacio about the papers that he has to pick up at the Railway P.O. before, he takes a train South in the morning. Overhearing this, Julieta volunteers to go get the papers in his stead. Ignacio asks her why, and Julieta replies because the Governor's spies don't know her. Ignacio tells them that they don't know him either and that he has to deliver a article to the newspaper and he'll go to the post office and pick up the envelope on his way. 

So Ignacio is spotted, picking up the documents by the man in black who tells his partner Barrios to follow him. The man in black heads back to the flop.

The RR Post Office giving off Bradbury Building vibes

Ignacio jumps on a trolley, Barrios close behind. On the trolley Ignacio meets a colleague from the paper, and passes his article to him and tells him he'll go home.  The colleague tells him he's going in the wrong direction, Ignacio replies that he's got to see someone first. 

Ignacio meets a colleague on the trolley

Back at the flop the landlord comes looking for the rent. So, Julieta takes him down to the pawn shop next door where she gets some advance money on a radio they got for sale. She gives the landlord a part of the rent. Julieta and the owner Mr. Santos are friends and he tells her to follow him up to the loft he has to look for and item anyway and he'll let her out on to the connecting roof terrace from the loft.

Julieta and the landlord

While she is gone the Governor's men drive up to the apartment house. Octavio smoking out in hall hears them enter the entrance way, and looking over the railing, sees them begin to climb the stair.

Octavio locks the door, runs back out through the flop and onto the roof terrace just as Julieta is emerging from the stores connection to the same terrace. He explains the danger. She hides Octavio in the stores loft and goes to confront the Governor's men. They search the apartment and terrace and find no one. One of the men thinks he saw Octavio escape across the roofs. The Governors men head back to the post office thinking that Octavio is now going to go and pick up the papers. 

In the street they pass Ruiz  who is going back to Julieta and Ignacio's apartment. He watches the darkened car pass. Then enters the building climbing up to Julieta and Ignacio's flop. Julieta, is back in the loft excitedly telling Octavio and Santos what happened. She then remembers that she didn't lock the apartment door in her haste. She goes back into the apartment from the terrace just as the man in black walks in from the entrance. Julieta confronts him. While they are talking Octavio, who followed Julieta, sneaks around behind the an in black and sticks his revolver in his back. Using a twisted sheet Octavio ties him up to a chair in the kitchen while Julieta covers him with Octavio's gun. 

 

With Ruiz tied up and while they wait for Ignacio's return, Octavio and Julieta talk of their past. She also tells Octavio that helping him with his cause is exciting and makes her feel alive again. Nearing 10 PM Julieta tells him that she must get dressed to go out. 

While Julieta is dressing Octavio tells her he has to make a phone call. She tells him the nearest phone is next to the Chinese Chop Suey joint. Octavio gives her his gun back. While Julieta changes the man in black works himself loose. As he grabs a hatchet, but flinches when he hears Julieta tell him not to move. The man in black turns around to see Julieta dressed in a revealing black gown holding a revolver. He tells Julieta, all the while advancing toward Julieta, that she is not the type to shoot in cold blood. Tells her that she can't kill a fly. 

But that he Ruiz could kill a worthless being like you. Tells her that she better give him the gun. "Give it to me or I'll kill you." Bad mistake Julieta shoots him dead. The femme fatale.

Octavio hears the shot while climbing back up the stairs. He runs the rest of the way to the flop. There he finds Julieta and her younger brother Juanito, standing by the body of the man in black. Octavio tells her not to feel bad because he had in coming, Tells her that this man was responsible for Armando Ruelas' death. Octavio goes to check if anybody heard the shot. Nobody. He tells Julieta that they have to get rid of the body and asks her how good a friend is Santos. 

Next, we see Octavio's men using Santos shop loft to build a crate. Octavio approaches and finally noticing that Julieta is all decked out asks if she "is going to a party?" No she tells him that she goes to entertain others "dancing" or "singing" at Tabu, its like a cabaret but it's not. She tells Octavio it was hunger that drove her to this. 

going to a party?

Tabu, its like a cabaret but it's not.

Interpretation

This is the word play work around in Cabaretera Noir, for whorehouse and lady of the evening / prostitute for whatever must have been Mexican equivalent of a Motion Picture Production Code. A loose woman "sings" and "dances" for money. The same similar  hints are given in other Cabaretera, Emilio Fernandez's 1949's Salon Mexico where the taxi dancers are also hookers and Aventurera (1949). Then same basic setup background scenario is repeated but it is now out in the open in 1974's Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, an American Neo Noir directed by Sam Peckinpah, in Emilio Fernandez's Zona roja (1976) and later in the La mujer del puerto 1991.

Of course things will spiral even further down into Noirsville from here and we are not even to the half way point of the film.

Noirsville

Kiko Mendiveas Singer at cabaret

Manuel Dondé as Gunman

Ana María Gonzálezas Singer at cabaret

Narciso Busquets as Juanito

Beatriz Ramosas Ignacio's lover

Julio Bracho along with directors Emilio "El Indio Fernandez, and Roberto Gavaldon heralded in what is now recognized as Mexico's Cinemas Golden Age. Aside from Pedro Armendáriz I'm not at all familiar with the cast who were still all very compelling to watch. The Noir Visuals lensed by Gabriel Figueroa were moody, crisp, and beautiful. The influence of mid 1930s French Poetic Realism is quite evident and it's been surmised that this may have been especially because the studio Films Mundiales was owned by expat French. Regardless - Bravo! 8-9/10