La dea inginocchiata

Someone wrote that the story was weak ;far from it, the screenplay is extremely well written ; the death of the wife segues into Maria Felix 's cabaret act : it may seem filler,but pay attention to what she's singing : it praises the virtues of.....free love , insists that marriage is ball and chain life ; no inquiry after a sudden death (the wife was ill ,but was she terminally-ill?) .Then two-thirds through the movie ,a la "vertigo" , they reveal the truth that takes the viewer aback ; but another unexpected twist comes in the last minutes .Plus perhaps a divine intervention? A heathen god ,for sure.

In Gavaldon's movies ,even though they do not belong to the fantasy genre ( like ,for instance, "Macario") ,one always feels a supernatural force ; Arthur De Cordova is eaten with desire ,which a shop sign reinforces (the signs sometimes play an important role in Gavaldon's works :see the neon signs on the charlatan's house in " palma di tu mano " ,"la otra" ) .When he's about to renege on his passion , the statue throws the whole thing back into question ;although the body is perfect , there's something maleficent in this "kneeling goddess", a pagan divinity which demands victims offered as a sacrifice to her beauty (statuesque Felix resembles a Mexican Ava Gardner ,remember the latter's statue in " barefoot comtessa"or in"one touch of Venus" ).