A small but distinctive subcategory of film noir features an ordinary character who, through chance or will, assumes the identity of a long lost member of a wealthy family; excellent examples include No Man of Her Own (1950), This Side of the Law (1950), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), and Emilio Fernández’s Cuando levanta de niebla (US: When the Fog Lifts), starring the superstar of Latin American film noir, Arturo de Córdova. During a surreal and creepy first act which features otherworldly shadows and a distant groaning chorus, mental hospital patient Pablo (de Córdova) concocts a plan to poison his wealthy roommate José Fuentes (Tito Junco), making it look like a heart attack, and assumes the victim’s identity to return to the Fuentes family estate where the only remaining family member is a younger sister named Silvia (María Elena Marqués) who was born after her brother’s conviction. Facilitated by Fuentes’s possibly skeptical uncle Carlos (Arturo Soto Rangel), Pablo’s entry into the household goes smoothly aside from his newfound romantic feelings for his “sister” Silvia, who is elated to meet him finally. This second act of relationship development leads to a final act in which passion turns to paranoia turns to psychosis, Lavista’s score becoming increasingly dissonant and frenetic as the mansion fills with tension. Fernández and famed noir cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa create thick atmosphere not only through shadows and light but through symbolic imagery like a claw-like dead tree protruding from the earth, a drop of poison fading into a guilty nurse’s teardrop, the camera following disembodied hands and torso as Pablo executes his deadly deed, etc.