“Perfidia” (Spanish for “perfidy”, meaning faithlessness, treachery or betrayal) is a 1939 Spanish-language song written by Mexican composer and arranger Alberto Dominguez (1906–1975). In Spanish, the lyrics conjure up a state of darkness and despair, part of a style known colloquially as “canciones corta-venas,” or songs to slit your wrists by. It describes a man so consumed by heartbreak and sorrow that people don’t want to be around him. But the song never actually says the woman cheated, or explains why she left. The man torments himself wondering where she may be and what adventures she may be having. Only God and the sea know the depths of his love and pain, he tells her.
There are two versions in English, but they both lack the emotional power of the original. The most well-known is by Milton Leeds, born in Omaha, Nebraska, three years after his Mexican counterpart. It is more corny than “corta-venas.” A more obscure version, published in 1939 under the title “Tonight” is an old-fashioned love song credited to bandleader Xavier Cugat and Will Heagney, a successful songwriter and vaudevillian. Cugat had an early hit with “Perfidia” the following year, but as an instrumental. Ten years later, crooner Tony Martin recorded a bilingual version of “Tonight,” using the Cugat/Heagney lyrics. These English verses are much more graceful and literate than the Leeds rendition, although they also lack the element of deep sorrow and desperate loss.
“Perfidia” made its debut on the silver screen in a film of the same name, also released in Mexico in 1939, and in the U.S. the following year. Filmmakers would continue to feature the melody in their work over the coming decades. In the 1941 film, Father Takes a Wife, a young and dapper Desi Arnaz breaks into the chorus of “Perfidia” to spontaneously serenade an obviously impressed, though just married Gloria Swanson on her honeymoon on the deck of a ship.
The following year, in the 1942 noir classic Casablanca, “Perfidia” plays while the characters Rick and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart) dance cheek-to-cheek in the famous Paris Flashback sequence. Fifty years later, a version sung by Linda Ronstadt is featured in the soundtrack to the 1992 film, The Mambo Kings, starring Antonio Banderas. (The composer’s other classic, “Frenesí,” was also used in its share of renowned movies, including two Oscar winners: Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987) and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), with Robert de Niro.)
In late 1960, a rock instrumental version of “Perfidia” was released by the Ventures, which rose to number 15 on the Billboard. The record was a Top 10 hit on a number of popular music radio stations, including KYA in San Francisco, KDWB Minneapolis, and KISN Portland. The record reached number 11 on the charts of WLS Chicago, and WIBG Philadelphia.
