Film

El (1952)

Director: Luis Buñuel

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Why would a fanatically jealous husband creep up on his sleeping wife clutching a bottle of anaesthetic and a needle and thread? In the gospel according to Buñuel, it's because he's a typical bourgeois male, terrified of female sexuality, projecting his own heavily repressed lusts on to every other male in sight. Buñuel examines him dispassionately, as a victim of himself and of the society that formed him; his story is neither a tragedy nor a comedy, but a necessary working out of certain moral and psychological tensions that are intrinsic in his class. The tone couldn't be further from the self-congratulation of an exercise like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

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