Despite the exciting and violent opening sequence in which José Luis (Armando Silvestre) and Antonio (Crox Alvarado) pull a robbery that goes awry and produces several corpses, Emilio Fernández’ La red (US: Rossana) is anything but a standard noir: it’s a poem, a trance, a Greek tragedy, a fugitive noir, and certainly one of the sexiest movies ever made. Having escaped the robbery uncaptured, Antonio finds refuge in a Mexican beach town where he lives in a seaside hut with the gorgeous Rossana (Rossana Podestà) and dives for sponges which Rossana sells in town to support them. This simple, idyllic lifestyle is later interrupted by the unexpected arrival of José Luis, who has completed his prison sentence and now seeks his friend’s companionship (and a role in the sponge business). Things go well for the trio at first, but, as would be expected when three beautiful people frolic half-naked on a beautiful beach day after day, soon comes the love triangle, which escalates to desperation, obsession, and murder. With very little dialogue and an expressive, guitar-heavy score, Fernández uses extensive close-ups to convey emotional confusion and impending doom, and the eminent Gabriel Figueroa’s camera captures sublime vistas of sea and sand and voyeuristic shots of endless sensuality, including a sequence when Rossana is quite literally staring at the two almost-naked male bodies swimming back and forth in front of her, as if she’s choosing between two cuts of meat at the market. The bliss and intimacy are interrupted by violence several times (Antonio’s brutal beating of Rossana, a shootout at the cantina, a fistfight in town), which hints at the tragic results to come. Note the similar premise and themes of Rossana to Fernández’ and Figeuroa’s earlier film, The Pearl (1947).