EL, in Spanish means "he", in this Buñuel's film, he is Francisco (de Córdova), an unmarried middle age bourgeois man, who is first seen as an assistant during a church ceremony in Mexico City, he is pouring water in the basin when Father Velasco (Baena) prepares to wash the feet of a young boy, and a close-up is zoomed in as Father kisses the foot he just washed, before another shot aiming a pair of female feet, the svelte legs then reveals they belong to a fine-looking woman Gloria (Garcés), whom Francisco falls for at first glance, lust stems from the sight of a pair of feet. So in hindsight, the tongue-in-cheek reference of feet fetish not just insinuates one of Francisco's essential quality is his religious fervour, but also incriminates religion as a main cause in his paranoid psyche. Seeing that it is also in the church, Francisco finally discharges all his rage over the tipping point, towards whom? Father Velasco, his dearest friend.The plot is a fairly conceivable, Gloria is recently return from Argentina with her mother (Walker) and is engaged with an architect Raúl (Beristáin), who turns out to be Francisco's acquaintance. Thus, by throwing a lavish dinner party in his immense villa, Francisco cunningly wins her over by his dedicated idea of true love should germinate from the very first sight (of course, his wealth and debonair flair also tip the scales). Then the time-line forwards a unspecified period of time, when a distraught Gloria seeks help from Raúl, the flashback unveils what is actually underneath the urbane facade of Francisco after they get married during that spell.Being an objectionable composite of wanton jealousy, paranoia, male chauvinism, self- centeredness, wanting confidence as a competent lover and overbearing self-respect "nothing I hate more than happy morons", Francisco is played out as a complete obnoxious character far far away beyond any redemption, while Gloria's own safety slowly but surely slides down into an ominous menace, to a point we wonder why she is still willing to live with him (a lavish villa is difficult to jolt, one may say). This is Buñuel in the mid-stream of his career, applies a more discreet visual style to this unsophisticated narrative, the showiest parts strike when Francisco totally loses his sanity, the irregular shooting angles, two different worlds (surreal and real) alternately materialise in front of him, honed up to a thrilling tension with Luis Hernández Bretón's arresting score.Arturo de Córdova's performance is sterling despite of Francisco is the impossible sort to invite compassion, utterly compelling when he betrays his deep-rooted vulnerability, although he is deeply in love with Gloria, he is unable to love, cannot even pull off his evil attempt of murder, an out-and-out weakling, subverted by his bourgeois upbringings and religious influence, monastery is the fitting final settling place for him. Delia Garcés's Gloria, adopts a comely appearance but hampered by her own indecision and subservience to a patriarchal supremacy, which society casts on women at that time, she is spellbound to watch when she finally opens up about all her suffering. Apart from an expert study on paranoia, the film is a telling lesson that every young woman should sensibly set a stint of observation period when a seemingly-perfect middled-aged bachelor proposes to you, and it is a safe bet that there is something iffy about him, personality-or-peculiarity-wise.

Although slightly more melodramatic, I feel this does have the edge over the later, 'Criminal Life of Archibaldo de La Cruz', which covers similar territory with more humour. A gripping and frightening tale of obsession that has a surprisingly large amount of echoes of Hitchcock's later, 'Vertigo' and seemingly that director took the bell tower sequence in its entirety. Still, who cares, great films remain great films, even when their inspiration may be revealed. The ending is low key but we are left in little doubt as to the state of mind of our hero/villain. Great performances help what might have seemed a preposterous tale, ring only too true. Probably best watched after Archibaldo, then the impact will be all the more great.

El (1953) *** 1/2 (out of 4) A wealthy, highly religious middle aged virgin (Arturo de Cordova) marries a woman (Delia Garces) he believes to be his true calling but things soon start to fall apart when the man becomes overdone with jealousy and obsession. This was my first Luis Bunuel film and while the story isn't anything too original, the direction certainly puts it in a league of its own. The claustrophobic ending was very well handled and highly memorable as was the performance by de Cordova who really gets inside this characters head.

Following your advice, I recently 'relented' to buying from Alapage the two Luis Bunuel Double-Feature discs released in France by Film Sans Frontieres. After watching them in their entirety, I cannot believe that I, who consider Bunuel my all-time favorite director and one of the true masters of the medium, have waited this long to acquire these DVDs. Actually while Alapage listed these DVDs at EUR25.73 on their site, they only cost me EUR21.51 each (excluding EUR12 shipping charges). So, if there is still anybody who has not purchased them yet, now may be the time to do so!Since I had never watched EL (1952) before, it was the first one to go through my DVD player. It was a chilling parable of an insanely jealous middle-aged man played with acute intensity by Arturo De Cordova. It afforded Bunuel ample opportunity to make practical use of overt Freudian symbolism without lending the film a heavy-handed air of pretentiousness. While there are some critics who consider it as merely 'an engaging, minor work', I regard it as being among Bunuel's finest; arguably, with this film, Bunuel reached the culmination of his work in Mexico, but it also looks forward to similar sequences and themes he would tackle later on in his career, especially TRISTANA (1970) and, his last film, THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977).EL was beautifully abetted by another of his low-budget Mexican films, the great black comedy THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (1955). Again, critical reception was a bit muted in some circles, dismissing it as 'just a throwaway oddity' typical of Bunuel's films of the period. However, it is much more than that: it is certainly very funny if you can accept its macabre sense of humor. It allowed Bunuel to create some of the most memorable images in all of his films, especially the celebrated dummy incineration scene, which could have been "inspired" by a similar scene in Michael Curtiz's marvelous MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) which Bunuel must have seen while working at Warner Bros. in the Thirties. A similar instance of this eclectic approach on Bunuel's part can be found in the "walking hand" sequence in his THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962) - one of my favorite Bunuels - which harks back to an identical premise in Robert Florey's THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946), another Warner Bros. horror melodrama. For me, one of the enduring assets of THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ is the charm and great beauty that was Miroslava Stern (who played the part of Lavinia and was the model for the ill-fated dummy). Tragically, she would take her own life a mere two weeks after the film's release with her body, ironically enough, ending up cremated!Both the print utilized and the transfer for both films were adequate enough, and perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. However, EL's overall visual and aural qualities where distinctly superior to those of ARCHIBALDO which suffered from excessive specks and slight audio dropouts at times, but were never so alarming as to dispel from one's viewing pleasure of the film.