El Bruto

One of the fascinating melodramas Buñuel made during his early years in Mexico. The landlord of a block of tenements tries to throw his tenants out to make way for a luxurious new house for himself and his mistress. To implement this, he hires a 'strong and devoted' slaughterhouse worker, and talks him into eliminating the community's leading resisters. Unusually, the film concentrates not on the heroic resistance of the tenants but on El Bruto himself, and his growing awareness of the iniquities of the paternalistic order he is helping. Buñuel sharpens the political edge by having El Bruto discover that his boss is also his natural father. The images are powerful, not to say - in a nightime chase sequence - magnetic, and the character of the reliable worker-cum-hired 'brute', who discovers who his real enemies are, unforgettable.