In Tito Davison’s Que dios me perdone (US: May God Forgive Me), Lena Kovach (María Félix) appears to be visually imprisoned no matter where she goes: cinematographer Phillips traps her among lattices of shadows in offices, restaurants, even her private bedroom at night. The incarceration motif reflects Kovach’s own mental state and life of deceit: she’s a nightclub singer, Sephardic Jew, and former prostitute whose daughter will die in a concentration camp unless she spies for the Nazis by marrying a business owner and sharing his plans for an invention with the Third Reich. A kind of Latin American, over-the-top spin on Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), Davison’s film also uses Hitchcockian suspense techniques, such as insert shots on objects and hands as a scene proceeds normally, while adding the kind of melodramatic twists one would expect in a Mexican rumbera, such as extramarital affairs and blackmail.
By Michael Bayer
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