María Félix in Italy

By the end of 1940s the Mexican film star, María Félix, had risen to the status of living legend at home and piqued the attention of filmmakers abroad. While her participation in Spanish and French productions has been studied, her performances in films produced in Italy, Incantesimo tragico (Dir. Mario Sequi, 1951) and Messalina (Dir. Carmine Gallone), have received less critical analysis. Building on scholarship about the regional and international reverberations of Mexican Golden Age cinema, studies on transnational stardom, as well as star theory, this article reveals how Felix’s projects in Italy constituted transnational experiments within a broader Southern European postwar strategy to counter Hollywood’s market dominance. In contradistinction to her Spanish and French films in which Félix was cast as a foreigner, in Italy Félix played Italian characters. Close film analysis illustrates how to varying degrees, Félix’s roles in Italy engaged her preestablished type known as the mujer sin alma (woman without a soul), and the examination of archival materials shows how the Italian popular press blended Félix’s onscreen characters with the actress off screen. Ultimately, Félix clashed with the ideals of postwar Italian female stardom and was met with an ambivalent financial and critical reception.