“I am Mexican cinema!” Emilio Fernández liked to tell people when they asked him about the state of filmmaking in his country. When one critic dared to dispute this grandiose claim, the director reputedly pulled a gun on him.
That story may be apocryphal but then Fernández tended to take a ‘print the legend’ approach to his own life, even if his life was already interesting enough to need no further embellishment. Having killed a man as a youth and fought in the quashed rebellion against President Obregón, Fernández ended up in jail in 1924, facing a 20-year prison sentence. He quickly escaped and fled to America, where he landed in Los Angeles and discovered the movies. […]
The template for Enamorada is Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, with the wealthy and anti-revolutionary Beatriz being particularly resistant to any taming. She is introduced wielding a gun and ready to defend herself against any man who dares to approach her.
[…] Figueroa’s mentoring by Toland and Fernández’s immersion in the home of American filmmaking during his formative years both seem to contribute to the aesthetic sheen of classical Hollywood cinema that is evident throughout Enamorada. The bickering relationship between the two leads has the ebb and flow of a screwball comedy (although Rosalind Russell never actually tried to blow up Cary Grant), while the more tender scenes are filmed with the intimacy and rapturous beauty of a Frank Borzage romance. […]
Through their very successful series of collaborations in the 1940s, Fernández and Figueroa are credited with playing a key role in putting Mexican cinema on the map, and Enamorada was seen as an important film by the authorities in helping to establish the country’s post-revolution identity. The narrative works to gradually bring together two fiercely independent and politically opposed people through the mediation of the Church, and the film’s climax proves to be genuinely stirring.

Philip Concannon, Enamorada, “Sight & Sound”, n. 11, November 2015