Subversive lines: gender in Roberto Gavaldón’s melodramatic film noirs

This essay looks at the series of noirish melodramas Roberto Gavaldon made in collaboration with writer and political activist José Revueltas: La otra (1946), La diosa arrodillada (1947), En la palma de tu mano (1951) and La noche avanza (1952) which have played an important part in theh re-evaluation of the director's career, featuring in recent retrospectives focused on the director and on Mexican film noir at the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM, 2014), the Melbourne Cinematheque (2019) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2008, 2015, 2019). This essay will explore how these noir films and, in particular their portrayal of gender are examples of the kind of cinematic subversion usually located in the director’s other films La barraca, El rebozo de soledad and Rosauro Castro (1950) which all undermine Classical Mexican cinema’s myth of rural nobility.