ÉL (LUIS BUÑUEL, 1953)
Randwick Ritz, Sydney:
6:00 PM
Sunday 10 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
6:30 PM
Sunday 17 May
Rating: Unclassified 18+
Duration: 92 minutes
Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Cast: Arturo de Córdova, Delia Garcés, Aurora Walker, Carlos Martínez Baena, Manuel Dondé, Luis Beristáin
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
6:00 PM
Sunday 10 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
6:30 PM
Sunday 17 May
Rating: Unclassified 18+
Duration: 92 minutes
Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Cast: Arturo de Córdova, Delia Garcés, Aurora Walker, Carlos Martínez Baena, Manuel Dondé, Luis Beristáin
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
4K RESTORATION – AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
‘After years of neglect, Buñuel’s corpus before Viridiana is finally getting recognised as the subversive achievement it is, and this raving melodrama is a key work – an ostensibly orthodox “woman’s film” trapped in the full nelson of Uncle Luis’s ardour for psychosexual irrationality.’ – Michael Atkinson, Sight and Sound
Distinguished middle-aged bachelor Francisco (Arturo de Córdova) successfully courts the younger Gloria (Delia Garcés) despite her previous engagement. Once they are married, Francisco’s paranoia, pathological jealousy and manipulation condemn Gloria to a nightmarish reality from which even her most trusted confidantes won’t allow her to escape.
Drawing from his own personal demons, Luis Buñuel brings us inside the unstable mind of his hypocritical, sexually repressed bourgeois protagonist in this adaptation of Mercedes Pinto’s autobiographical novel, expressionistically shot by Gabriel Figueroa and made during the director’s underappreciated Mexican period. Although largely dismissed during its initial release, Él was reportedly highly esteemed by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and is now regarded as a major achievement.
Introduced by Stefan Solomon at Ritz Cinemas and Nadine Whitney at Lido Cinemas.
‘After years of neglect, Buñuel’s corpus before Viridiana is finally getting recognised as the subversive achievement it is, and this raving melodrama is a key work – an ostensibly orthodox “woman’s film” trapped in the full nelson of Uncle Luis’s ardour for psychosexual irrationality.’ – Michael Atkinson, Sight and Sound
Distinguished middle-aged bachelor Francisco (Arturo de Córdova) successfully courts the younger Gloria (Delia Garcés) despite her previous engagement. Once they are married, Francisco’s paranoia, pathological jealousy and manipulation condemn Gloria to a nightmarish reality from which even her most trusted confidantes won’t allow her to escape.
Drawing from his own personal demons, Luis Buñuel brings us inside the unstable mind of his hypocritical, sexually repressed bourgeois protagonist in this adaptation of Mercedes Pinto’s autobiographical novel, expressionistically shot by Gabriel Figueroa and made during the director’s underappreciated Mexican period. Although largely dismissed during its initial release, Él was reportedly highly esteemed by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and is now regarded as a major achievement.
Introduced by Stefan Solomon at Ritz Cinemas and Nadine Whitney at Lido Cinemas.
FILM NOTES
By Janice Tong
By Janice Tong
Janice Tong is a long-time cinephile with a particular interest in French and European cinema. Her blog: Night … thoughts on Cinema is a collection of her writings on film.
‘A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them, the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts.’ (Luis Buñuel)
For many, the name Luis Buñuel immediately conjures up that notorious image of a straight razor slicing open a woman’s eye in close-up. Very few cinematic images have captured that kind of fame, or have their legend reach across such an expansive audience. This image comes from the director’s very first film, Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), a 16-minute, silent black-and-white short which Buñuel famously concocted with Salvador Dalí. It is a film devoid of all narrative logic, inspired by the dreams of the two men.
At its premiere, Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier, Jean Cocteau, and the entire Surrealist set led by André Breton attended the screening. Though the film was claimed by the Surrealists as part of their movement and deemed as a piece of avant-garde cinema par excellence, Buñuel and Dalí rejected the film's positive reception, stating that the audience has completely missed the point of the film, which was to shock and insult the bourgeois intellectuals – ‘basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder.’
That same spirit of activism never left Buñuel in his 48 years as a filmmaker. If Surrealism was his modus operandi, Buñuel’s films nonetheless have a strong narrative bent, though his storylines do not necessarily follow conventional ideals. Instead, they are infused with indignation and illustrated by a dream logic. His films are all the more memorable because of this.
In contrast to Buñuel's more well-known surrealist or satirical films, such as the well-liked Belle de Jour (1967), or the (anti)-bourgeois trilogy that includes Le Fantôme de la liberté (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974) – who can forget that scene where immaculately dressed dinner guests share a spot of time together relieving themselves on their porcelain thrones – Él has often been considered as a straightforward melodrama.
Él was made during the director’s self-exiled “Mexican period” (1947–1965), when he met and worked with producer Óscar Dancigers. Buñuel honed his craft at the height of Mexico’s epoca de oro [golden age], making 21 films in 18 years. After a disastrous first collaboration with Dancigers, they developed a “system” of work – by limiting production to only 125 shots (their second film finished in a mere 16 days) – they spawned a tremendous output of films. Él was made within a tight three-week schedule. It was not well received at the box office – legend has it that Dancigers stormed out of the screening amidst a laughing audience. It managed a fortnight at the box office only due to the prestige of the male lead, Arturo de Córdova, who was considered to be Mexico’s own Clark Gable.
Él is a meditation on obsession and a man’s descent into madness, one of Buñuel’s rawest critiques of religion and class hypocrisy. The film is shot in black-and-white. We first encounter the doomed couple in church during Maundy Thursday, among the parade of foot-washing and the reverential kissing of the feet of the chosen – an image-echo from the earlier L'Âge d'or (The Age of Gold, 1930): there, with more carnal profundity; here, the priest is kissing the feet of young altar boys. Francisco (Arturo de Córdova) observes this ritual as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, but nonetheless gets distracted. His eyes drift to the shoes of the seated congregation and settle upon a pair of feet in black heels. As his gaze travels upwards, following the curve of the legs, he sees the beautiful Gloria (Delia Garcés), the object of his desire, her face radiant and suppliant. (Francisco later declares to Gloria that it was her ‘air of resignation’ that he found to be the most attractive aspect about her – and yes, warning bells would have been ringing in her ears.) In this first scene, their eyes lock but for a moment before she lowers hers.
The first six minutes of the film are without dialogue, highlighting every action shown on screen. The revelatory power of the gesture, like the unfolding of the psyche – from infatuation to obsession, from obsession to paranoia – is a slow burn.
The same can be said of the erosion of agency, of personal freedom. At first alarm bells may sound, but often the glacial speed with which the disintegration seeps into our consciousness means we are caught unaware – often when it is “too late.” Buñuel’s writings and films aim to shake up this stupefying status quo, to literally shock and propel one into responding, ‘to destroy a society that he found corrupt and idiotic, to ridicule a religion that had oppressed millions of people,’ Buñuel’s sons wrote.
Throughout the film a sense of the uncanny creeps in. As viewers, we are burdened with an uneasy feeling of watching a film within a film, or, more precisely, seeing the ghost of another film unfold within this film. The ghost film is none other than Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo (1958) – the fall of Scottie (James Stewart) follows the same arc as that of Francisco. The shifts in point of view throughout the narrative, moving from a traditional male gaze to that of Gloria’s perspective, echo the change in power relations towards the perspective of the Carlotta/Madeleine/Judy trinity, over that of Scottie, in Vertigo. Hitchcock had called Buñuel ‘the best director in the world.’
Incidentally, my favourite Buñuel film is from this Mexican period: El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel, 1962), in which, slowly and inexplicably, dinner guests were unable to leave despite the open doorway: as each guest made their way towards it, they would come up with an excuse or a reason to stay. Despite the knowledge they have outstayed their welcome, hours and days dwindle past. Overcome with exhaustion, any modicum of civility vanishes.
This pervasive sense of ennui brought on by conformity is Buñuel’s trigger. He has created a cinematic language that at once examines and satirises the struggle between power and powerlessness, showing how both sides of this seismic coin can render a person impotent, creating a kind of maligned stasis. It is time to wake up from this somnambulist state.
For many, the name Luis Buñuel immediately conjures up that notorious image of a straight razor slicing open a woman’s eye in close-up. Very few cinematic images have captured that kind of fame, or have their legend reach across such an expansive audience. This image comes from the director’s very first film, Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), a 16-minute, silent black-and-white short which Buñuel famously concocted with Salvador Dalí. It is a film devoid of all narrative logic, inspired by the dreams of the two men.
At its premiere, Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier, Jean Cocteau, and the entire Surrealist set led by André Breton attended the screening. Though the film was claimed by the Surrealists as part of their movement and deemed as a piece of avant-garde cinema par excellence, Buñuel and Dalí rejected the film's positive reception, stating that the audience has completely missed the point of the film, which was to shock and insult the bourgeois intellectuals – ‘basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder.’
That same spirit of activism never left Buñuel in his 48 years as a filmmaker. If Surrealism was his modus operandi, Buñuel’s films nonetheless have a strong narrative bent, though his storylines do not necessarily follow conventional ideals. Instead, they are infused with indignation and illustrated by a dream logic. His films are all the more memorable because of this.
In contrast to Buñuel's more well-known surrealist or satirical films, such as the well-liked Belle de Jour (1967), or the (anti)-bourgeois trilogy that includes Le Fantôme de la liberté (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974) – who can forget that scene where immaculately dressed dinner guests share a spot of time together relieving themselves on their porcelain thrones – Él has often been considered as a straightforward melodrama.
Él was made during the director’s self-exiled “Mexican period” (1947–1965), when he met and worked with producer Óscar Dancigers. Buñuel honed his craft at the height of Mexico’s epoca de oro [golden age], making 21 films in 18 years. After a disastrous first collaboration with Dancigers, they developed a “system” of work – by limiting production to only 125 shots (their second film finished in a mere 16 days) – they spawned a tremendous output of films. Él was made within a tight three-week schedule. It was not well received at the box office – legend has it that Dancigers stormed out of the screening amidst a laughing audience. It managed a fortnight at the box office only due to the prestige of the male lead, Arturo de Córdova, who was considered to be Mexico’s own Clark Gable.
Él is a meditation on obsession and a man’s descent into madness, one of Buñuel’s rawest critiques of religion and class hypocrisy. The film is shot in black-and-white. We first encounter the doomed couple in church during Maundy Thursday, among the parade of foot-washing and the reverential kissing of the feet of the chosen – an image-echo from the earlier L'Âge d'or (The Age of Gold, 1930): there, with more carnal profundity; here, the priest is kissing the feet of young altar boys. Francisco (Arturo de Córdova) observes this ritual as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, but nonetheless gets distracted. His eyes drift to the shoes of the seated congregation and settle upon a pair of feet in black heels. As his gaze travels upwards, following the curve of the legs, he sees the beautiful Gloria (Delia Garcés), the object of his desire, her face radiant and suppliant. (Francisco later declares to Gloria that it was her ‘air of resignation’ that he found to be the most attractive aspect about her – and yes, warning bells would have been ringing in her ears.) In this first scene, their eyes lock but for a moment before she lowers hers.
The first six minutes of the film are without dialogue, highlighting every action shown on screen. The revelatory power of the gesture, like the unfolding of the psyche – from infatuation to obsession, from obsession to paranoia – is a slow burn.
The same can be said of the erosion of agency, of personal freedom. At first alarm bells may sound, but often the glacial speed with which the disintegration seeps into our consciousness means we are caught unaware – often when it is “too late.” Buñuel’s writings and films aim to shake up this stupefying status quo, to literally shock and propel one into responding, ‘to destroy a society that he found corrupt and idiotic, to ridicule a religion that had oppressed millions of people,’ Buñuel’s sons wrote.
Throughout the film a sense of the uncanny creeps in. As viewers, we are burdened with an uneasy feeling of watching a film within a film, or, more precisely, seeing the ghost of another film unfold within this film. The ghost film is none other than Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo (1958) – the fall of Scottie (James Stewart) follows the same arc as that of Francisco. The shifts in point of view throughout the narrative, moving from a traditional male gaze to that of Gloria’s perspective, echo the change in power relations towards the perspective of the Carlotta/Madeleine/Judy trinity, over that of Scottie, in Vertigo. Hitchcock had called Buñuel ‘the best director in the world.’
Incidentally, my favourite Buñuel film is from this Mexican period: El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel, 1962), in which, slowly and inexplicably, dinner guests were unable to leave despite the open doorway: as each guest made their way towards it, they would come up with an excuse or a reason to stay. Despite the knowledge they have outstayed their welcome, hours and days dwindle past. Overcome with exhaustion, any modicum of civility vanishes.
This pervasive sense of ennui brought on by conformity is Buñuel’s trigger. He has created a cinematic language that at once examines and satirises the struggle between power and powerlessness, showing how both sides of this seismic coin can render a person impotent, creating a kind of maligned stasis. It is time to wake up from this somnambulist state.
THE RESTORATION
Source: Janus Films
This 4K restoration was scanned from a dupe positive preserved by Películas y Vídeos Internacionales at the Filmoteca de la UNAM. Color grading was supervised by Gabriel Figueroa Flores. The restoration work was completed at L’Immagine Ritrovata in 2022. The Film Foundation extends special thanks to Guillermo del Toro and Daniela Michel.
Director: Luis Buñuel; Producer: Óscar Dancigers; Script: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza; based on Pensamientos by Mercedes Pinto; Photography: Gabriel Figueroa; Editor: Carlos Savage; Production Design: Edward Fitzgerald; Music: Luis Hernández Bretón // Cast: Arturo de Córdova (Francisco Galván de Montemayor), Delia Garcés (Gloria Vilalta), Aurora Walker (Doña Esperanza Vilalta), Luis Beristáin (Raúl Conde).
Mexico | 1953 | 92 mins | 4K DCP | B&W | Spanish with English subtitles | Unclassified 18+
This 4K restoration was scanned from a dupe positive preserved by Películas y Vídeos Internacionales at the Filmoteca de la UNAM. Color grading was supervised by Gabriel Figueroa Flores. The restoration work was completed at L’Immagine Ritrovata in 2022. The Film Foundation extends special thanks to Guillermo del Toro and Daniela Michel.
Director: Luis Buñuel; Producer: Óscar Dancigers; Script: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza; based on Pensamientos by Mercedes Pinto; Photography: Gabriel Figueroa; Editor: Carlos Savage; Production Design: Edward Fitzgerald; Music: Luis Hernández Bretón // Cast: Arturo de Córdova (Francisco Galván de Montemayor), Delia Garcés (Gloria Vilalta), Aurora Walker (Doña Esperanza Vilalta), Luis Beristáin (Raúl Conde).
Mexico | 1953 | 92 mins | 4K DCP | B&W | Spanish with English subtitles | Unclassified 18+