Film noir
The rumberas films have their roots in various film genres. The film noir, very popular in Hollywood and other film industries in the 1930s and 1940s, can be considered their cornerstone, given the urban environment of the genre. Film noir was characterized by having among its protagonists the femme fatales, the cabaret women who aroused the passions of men and were often the source of conflict in the plot. Gloria Grahame and Rita Hayworth created film noir images of women who enjoy singing cabaret and simultaneously make men suffer. Their other base was the Hollywood musical of the 1930s, epitomized by Busby Berkeley and his famous colorful and extravagant musical numbers endowed with a deep aesthetic expression. Although not in such stylized form (due to limited budgets), rumberas films tried to imitate in their musical numbers the guidelines of the genre. Finally, the film genre was enriched by the Urban social cinema or melodramatic films, whose principal artisan in Mexico was the filmmaker Alejandro Galindo. All this mix of elements and genres can be considered the basis of rumberas film.