The Kneeling Goddess

In which wealthy industrialist Arturo de Cordova purchases the titular nude sculpture of his lover (María Félix) as an anniversary gift for his innocent, adoring wife. It’s not long afterwards that the sickly wife dies, though untangling just how and why is part of the pleasure of this demented melodrama from Roberto Gavaldón (La Otra).

Screen siren María Félix, nicknamed “La Doña”, later described herself as “the number one enemy of Mexican family morals”, and here she’s playing a quintessential femme fatale, who uses her beauty as a means to get ahead in a dog-eat-dog world. Yet she emerges as the most complex and intriguing character in the frame, as tragic a the blameless wife.

DP Alex Phillips hailed from Renfrew, Ontario, but went on to shoot more than 200 films in Mexico, working with all the major directors of the “golden age”, including Buñuel, Bracho, and of course Gavaldón.

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This feverishly perverse saga of amor loco—something like the necro-noir of Laura crossed with the tranced-out style of Last Year at Marienbad—is packed with enough outré flourishes to satisfy a card-carrying Dadaist.

Film at Lincoln Centre

The most perverse of all noirs… The Kneeling Goddess melts noir’s icy cool—and Mexico’s moneyed elite—with Baudelairean passion.

Jason Sanders