Margarita (Luz Maria Aguilar) tells her father, Don Gerardo Montes (Carlos Lopez Moctezuma) that she is going to marry Felipe Arnaiz (Mauricio Garces). Don Gerardo is not happy with the decision. Margarita marries Felipe anyway. Margarita gets pregnant and has a son, Jorgito (Marina Banquells). Margarita, aware of the family secrets, becomes devoted to her son and refuses to leave his side. Felipe gets frustrated with his wife being so paranoid and refusing to leave the house. When Felipe wants to go out to a party, Margarita refuses to go. He threatens to have an affair if she doesn’t stop hovering around the boy and go out with him. Don Gerardo pulls Felipe aside and tells him about the family curse.
In the 1500’s a conquistador, Don Nuno de Montesclaros (Eduardo Farjado), meets and has an affair with Luisa del Carmen (Maria Elena Marques), a young and beautiful woman of Spanish and Aztec decent. With Don Nuno, Luisa gives birth to a boy and a girl. Nuno starts staying away telling Louisa that he is on business. Nuno, coward that he is, sends his friend, Tristan (Juan Jose Martinez Casado) to dump Luisa. Luisa tracks Nuno down at the palace of the Viceroy. She finds out that Nuno plans on marrying another woman, Dona Ana (Erna Martha Bauman). Luisa becomes unhinged and stabs her children to death. Luisa is captured and hung. Before she dies, she curses the Montes family stating that the first-born child of every generation will die violently. She is hung in the town square, still calling for her dead children.
Felipe dismisses the tale as so much nonsense. Soon after that a woman, Carmen Asiul (Maria Elena Marques), shows up to take a job as Jorgito’s nanny. Don Gerardo feels that he has seen Carmen before but can’t place her. What he doesn’t know is that the Carmen is the spirit of Luisa and is here to kill Margarita’s and Felipe’s son.
“La Llorona” AKA “The Crying Woman” was released in 1960 and was directed by Rene Cardona. It is a Mexican horror film. The movie is loosely based on a Mexican legend.
Because the stories are numerous and varied, films concerning the legend fluctuate widely in their interpretations and their poetic license in retelling the story. This one is a little closer to the usual story than most but not much. Even so, the film is a little on the slow side but is bolstered tremendously by the talent of Maria Elena Marques. She manages to be both beautiful and menacing at the same time.
The La Llorona, or Weeping Woman, or Crying Woman legend is a part of Mexican folklore and has more than one interpretation. She is the spirit of a woman who, in most stories, was either abandoned by her lover, or was enraged because of her cheating husband, went insane, and killed her children. In most stories the children were drowned in a river and the spirit of the weeping woman is doomed to wander along the riverbank searching for her dead children. If you hear her moaning or weeping, then you will be the next victim. The legend warns that if you hear the wail of La Llorona, run.
The part of the Jorgito, the son of Margarita and Filipe, is played by a girl, Marina Banquells.