Enamorada with Río Escondido

Enamorada (A Woman in Love)
This loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew boasts the pitch-perfect casting of María “La Doña” Félix in one of her three Ariel-winning roles. Félix portrays Beatriz Peñafiel, the headstrong daughter of the wealthiest man in Cholula and revolutionary General Reyes’s (Pedro Armendáriz) thwarted object of desire. Entered into the Venice Film Festival, Enamorada was Félix’s first collaboration with director Emilio Fernández, and the filmmaker’s fourth project with renowned cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. The romantic screwball comedy comes together thanks to the prolific Gloria Schoemann, the editor of the picture (and over 200 more) and one of the unsung damas of Mexico’s Golden Age.

DIRECTED BY: Emilio Fernández. WRITTEN BY: Emilio Fernández, Íñigo de Martino. WITH: María Félix, Pedro Armendáriz, Fernando Fernández, José Morcillo. 1946. 99 min. Mexico. B&W. Spanish. DCP. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with Fundacion Televisa AC and Filmoteca de la UNAM. Restoration funded by the Material World Charitable Foundation. Screening courtesy of Televisa Foundation–Univision Foundation.

Río Escondido (Hidden River)
Nominated for 11 Ariel Awards and winner of 9, including Best Picture, Best Cinematography for Gabriel Figueroa, and Silver Ariels for actors María Félix, Jaime Jiménez Pons, and Carlos López Moctezuma, the sheer talent that contributed to every aspect of this melodrama about schoolteacher Rosaura (Félix) and her uphill battle to educate the youth in a rural village makes Río Escondido a high-water mark of Golden Age filmmaking. A quintessential weepie in the vein of so many Bette Davis and Joan Crawford melodramas that preceded it, Félix plays the martyr, but not before stealing the screen with her tour-de-force performance.

DIRECTED BY: Emilio Fernández. WRITTEN BY: Emilio Fernández, Mauricio Magdaleno. WITH: María Félix, Carlos López Moctezuma, Fernando Fernández, Agustín Isunza. 1948. 110 min. Mexico. B&W. Spanish. DCP. Courtesy of Arte & Cultura del Centro Ricardo B. Salinas Pliego.