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Fans of classic Mexican cinema have an embarrassment of riches to feast on later this month when the Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) retrospective “Spectacle Every Day: Mexican Popular Cinema” begins. The series, curated and produced in partnership with the Locarno Film Festival and sponsored by Mubi, will feature an eclectic mix of 22 midcentury Mexican films produced from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Running at Flc from July 26-August 8, the series features classic horror movies, film noir, comedies, Westerns, lucha libre superhero movies, and early 3D cinema from one of Mexico’s richest periods of cultural output. Many of the films are either debuting new restorations or, in some cases, screening theatrically in the United States for the first time. The titles were originally screened together as part of a retrospective at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival, which featured 36 Mexican films before trimming its lineup down to 22 entries for the New York remounting.

“Daughter of Deceit” turns out to be unlike any other Buñuel film I’ve ever seen. Its melodramatic story of a man betrayed by his unfaithful wife who punishes her by giving away their baby, and then turning into a brutal nightclub owner who almost kills his unknown daughter’s husband -- before everything is briskly resolved happily and tied up with a bow -- is told with none of his trademark irony. I find myself wondering if I’d have the slightest inkling if it was by Buñuel, if somehow I’d seen it without any credits. Only two years before “El,” I think! It’s entirely enjoyable in a trashy-movie way, with a comic-relief duo, scenes of shabby nightclub dancers and a singer dressed in tight satin with an amazing cantilevered bosom, and a committed performance by Fernando Soler as the brute. And it has the distinct advantage...