“From hell in the cabaret to heaven in your arms.” It’s nothing short of a miracle that La mancha de sangre (US: The Blood Stain), progenitor of the Mexican cabaretera genre and Mexican painter Adolfo Best-Maugard’s only feature film, is available to contemporary viewers in any form. Suppressed and censored by Mexican authorities for six years until a butchered version was finally released in 1943, the film was later considered lost until a severely damaged negative was discovered, minus a few sections. This compromised relic is the only version available today, yet the film is still worth seeking out for its historical and cultural significance; its “objectionable” subject matter was an explicit treatment of prostitution and an inventively shot strip tease involving full nudity. The lead character is cabaret waitress and hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Camelia (Stella Inda, the later star of Buñuel’s 1950 The Young and the Damned), who immediately falls in love with boyish drifter Guillermo (José Casal) when he arrives in town looking for work. Performed with an extremely authentic tenderness, the romance builds to a slow boil until Camelia’s pimp Gastón (Heriberto Batemberg) steps in to throw metaphorical cold water and banish Guillermo from the cabaret. Later, while Camelia pines for her lost love, Guillermo gets involved with gangsters, ultimately returning to Camelia and the cabaret (“I have money and I’m really happy”) just to encounter new threats of violence. The contrast of a sweet, starry-eyed boy from the village with the drunks and whores of the city adds a unique pathos; deftly straddling both worlds, Camelia desires to keep Guillermo a “decent man” (she assiduously sweeps the dirt and grit from her apartment floor before he visits for the first time). Best-Maugard effectively establishes the cabaret ambience — the girls watch out for each other, the musicians know their cues — while his aesthetic resembles a collision of high art (overhead angles, roving cameras) and crude editing one step up from a silent film.