Él

(This Strange Passion)

4K Digital Restoration

featuring

Arturo de Córdova, Delia Garcés, Carlos Martínez Baena, Aurora Walker,

This is a study of “mad love” gone truly mad amidst the neurotic compulsions of the haute bourgeoisie. The protagonist, Francisco, is a forty-year-old virgin holding out for perfect—and perfectly respectable—love. Francisco’s apparent self-possession masks a ruthless severity, and his romanticism girdles insane misogyny. He takes a young wife, who tries to adjust to the tyranny of his jealous behavior, until the evening he enters her room with some menacing instruments. “The influence of de Sade is everywhere apparent in a scenario that the majority of the Mexican public took for a run-of-the-mill melodrama on jealousy,” wrote the Surrealist Ado Kyrou.

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Luis Buñuel
  • Luis Alcoriza
Based On
  • a novel by Mercedes Pinto

Cinematographer
  • Gabriel Figueroa
Language
  • Spanish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • DCP
  • 93 mins
Source
  • Janus Films

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