#1289: BUÑUEL, Luis: Él (1953)

BUÑUEL, Luis (Mexico)

Él [1953]

Spine #1289

Blu-ray

Spanish surrealist master Luis Buñuel’s fiendish tale of love gone wrong is among the most perverse and unsettling films he made during his two decades of exile in Mexico. Folding his own neuroses into an adaptation of Mercedes Pinto’s autobiographical novel, Buñuel crafts an expressionistically stylized nightmare in which a young woman (Delia Garcés) discovers that the outward sophistication of her new husband (Arturo de Córdova) masks disturbing depths of jealousy and paranoia. A characteristically raw indictment of religious and social hypocrisy, Él stands as the director’s greatest excursion into melodrama, a vivid portrayal of society’s inability to restrain the irrational urges of the human id.

93 minutes

Monaural

Black and White
in Spanish
1:37:1

Criterion Release 2025

Director/Writers

Luis Buñuel was 53 when he directed Él.

Written by Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza.

Based upon the novel by Mercedes Pinto.

Other Buñuel films in the Collection:

#332: Viridiana (1961)
#459: The Exterminating Angel (1962)
#117: Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
#460: Simon of the Desert (1965)
#593: Belle de Jour (1967)
#402: The Milky Way (1969)
#0000E/#102: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
#0000E/#290: The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
#0000E/#143: That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

The Film

The Extras

The Booklet

Commentary

Video tribute

Documentary 1

Documentary 2

Documentary 3

Controversial altered ending

Theatrical trailer

99

By Director

By Spine #