Julio Bracho came from a family of film professionals: his sister Andrea Palma (an actress), his brother Jesús Bracho (an art director), his cousins Ramón Novarro and Dolores del Río (both actors), as well as his descendants, including his daughter Diana Bracho and his grandson Julio, also actors. Bracho was an educated and cultured man, but he hardly received any recognition from the Mexican film industry; in his writings he sometimes alternated disdain with resentment, due to his disgust with the low cultural level of authorities and people of all levels. However he is recognized today as a top filmmaker from the golden era of Mexican cinema, but I confess I have seen only a few of his movies: his first work, "Ay, qué tiempos, señor Don Simón" (1941), was a musical comedy about the morals of the rural bourgeoisie aligned with the government of dictator Porfirio Díaz, before the 1910 revolution; the following year, "The Virgin That Forged a Country" (starring cousin Novarro), was a mixture of legend and history recounting the origin of the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe; "Another Dawn" (1943), starring sister Andrea and considered his best film, is a solid drama with a laborer and a taxi dancer as main characters; and now "Crepúsculo", an erotic melodrama tinted with psychology, among the rich in Mexico City. The film has a few elements against it that if you are tolerant you may enjoy its viewing more: first it is narrated every now and then by its protagonist (Arturo de Córdova), an anti- cinematic resource that needs fine images to ingeniously illustrate the spoken word, something that Bracho is not always able to achieve; then it has frequent little speeches against the commercialization of medicine, against Mexican movies or bad psychiatry; and finally it is too long due to a script (also by Bracho) who gets lost in winding mental paths which in the end lead to an eye-popping location that, up to that moment, has not had any relevance in the plot. To compensate there are many technical and artistic virtues, that captivated me in a few moments: the breakdown of some scenes in virtuoso shots by maestro Alex Phillips, Jorge Fernández's conscientious art direction that gives visual unity to the story, the beautiful costumes by Margaret Vogel, Raúl Lavista passionate melodramatic score; and the performances of the whole cast, in particular veteran Julio Villarreal as the old psychiatrist who, although reciting his lines, delivers a strong conclusion in his big scene, when he orders hesitant De Córdova to perform a surgery. Somehow I feel that "Crepúsculo" conforms a group of similar three films that I would call "Arturo de Córdova' s Neurosis Trilogy", along with Roberto Gavaldón's "The Kneeling Goddess" (1947) and Luis Buñuel's "He" (or This Strange Passion, 1953). It is true that De Córdova often played crazy men in films
Just consider "The Man Without a Face" (1950), "The New Invisible Man" (1958) and "The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales" (1960)... But the first three have sexuality and the female body as common denominators, as De Córdova becomes obsessed with the women he lusts after. All what "He" lacks of is a statue of a nude woman (instead you have the girl's bare feet!), but the three share De Córdova's addiction to women's bodies. Enjoy it.
