The Kneeling Goddess

This feverishly perverse saga of amor loco from unsung Mexican melodrama specialist Roberto Gavaldón unfolds in a dream space halfway between the obsessive necro-noir of Laura and the trance-state surrealism of Last Year at Marienbad. The iconic María Félix plays a sultry artist’s model who spurns the advances of a married aristocrat (Arturo de Córdova)—that is, until she suspects he has murdered his wife for her, leading her to suddenly develop the hots for him. Drenched in moody noir atmospherics, the film is packed with enough outré flourishes—mirror shots galore, a cigarette lighter filled with cyanide, the titular marble statue as a totem of erotic fixation—to satisfy a card-carrying Dadaist. Courtesy of Filmoteca UNAM.