Él

A landmark of Buñuel’s Mexican period, El is a psychological drama and satire of masculinity, praised by Guillermo del Toro and rooted in Mercedes Pinto’s autobiographical novel Pensamientos. Arturo de Córdova plays Francisco, a wealthy bachelor whose obsessive pursuit of a “perfect” marriage collapses into paranoia, surveillance, and coercive control. What begins as a conventional romance becomes a critique of patriarchal possession and the institutions that fail women.

The film’s surreal touches, embedded within a commercial melodrama, expose male hysteria rather than the typical female version found in the genre. Francisco’s jealousy forms a logical, airtight system built on a false premise, a structure that reportedly fascinated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Modern readings, including #MeToo-era interpretations, emphasise how the film presents competing realities shaped by viewers’ own biases.

Often considered a precursor to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, El also explores the molding of a woman into a delusion, though Buñuel’s surrealist imagery is far more disruptive, and the details not at all for the squeamish – most memorably Francisco’s hallucination of stabbing a needle through a keyhole. Initially a commercial failure, the film later gained recognition as a subversion of the macho cinematic archetype and a peak example of Buñuel’s ability to smuggle surrealism within the guise of genre filmmaking.

“Though set in Mexico and ripe with authentic details of daily life, Él’s brutal and absurd glimpse at one man’s runaway paranoia could have been set just about anywhere and been every bit as relevant and incendiary.” – Ed Gonzalez, Slant