“El inaugurates the third line of Buñuel's Mexican career, which follows the complicated, tormented loves of those neurotics who best crystallize the confusions of the haute bourgeoisie” Raymond Durgnat.
The film's dubious hero is a wealthy man whose apparent self-possession masks a ruthless severity, and whose painful romanticism girdles insane misogyny. “The hero of El interests me as a beetle, or a disease-carrying fly does,” Buñuel has written. “I've always found insects exciting. In El I was consciously trying to make a film about extreme, non-conventional types of Love and Jealousy.... (D)espite what the critics inferred, there was no precise intention of imitating the Marquis de Sade.... The most natural thing for me, when working in a dramatic form, is to see and think out a situation from a Sadique or sadist point of view. I found myself asking: what should the character take--a revolver? a knife? a chair? I finished by choosing some more disturbing objects. That's all.”