“If Enamorada were a photograph album how we would love to turn its pages and thank its author, Gabriel Figueroa, who – as he did with Maria Candelaria – generously gives us the most beautiful images in the world. Black-and-white film has proven to work wonderfully in Mexican cinema, and in some of his productions (…). It’s been magnified in images rich in pictorial depth, in which both the shadows and the brightness of faces and scenery are captured by the unique light of that country. Yet Enamorada is not a photograph album – it is a film – and often this formal beauty and the story’s plot do not correspond. The many elements that make up the film coexist, but rarely reach a sense of unity. (…) In Enamorada it seems that the director, Emilio Fernandez, wanted to use that same inspiration and cre­ate another love story. The story is certainly passionate, and at times quite moving, but it is no longer the simple, banal (…) sto­ry of Maria. This time there is the addition of class conflict, and the author chooses some of the most conventional characters in this genre to enliven it: a coarse rebel leader (Pedro Armen­dariz) in love with a haughty (as could be expected) young aristocrat (Maria Felix), hostile towards the love that she has sparked. How will the story unfold? Maria Felix will be won over by the rebel’s love (thanks to the influence of an ecstatic priest), and she will follow him to his defeat, after he refuses to fight against the regular troops. If love is a winner, the revolution has been won. (…) Pedro Armendariz, who was in his element in Maria Candelaria, seems a bit lost in this role not tailored to him. He surprises us when his seemingly passive face turns quite violent, and while we imagine him to be a man of few words, he confesses his love in a manner reminiscent of The Song of Solomon. Yet it is his simple humanity, so constant through all of the throes of passion, to which we owe any emotions evoked. Maria Felix is beautiful. As for the images (…), I’d like to end with them, and especially with Pedro’s evening serenade under Maria’s window; a scene composed of a series of charming ‘pictures’ made more profound by the heartrendingly pure song”.

José Zendel, Amours mexicaines et révolution; d’admirables photos, mais…, “L’Écran frangais”, Paris, n. 151, 18 May 1948