Él
Él
•
1h 33m
Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1953 • Mexico
Starring Arturo de Córdova, Delia Garcés, Aurora Walker
Spanish surrealist master Luis Buñuel’s fiendish tale of love gone wrong is among the most perverse and unsettling films he made during his two decades of exile in Mexico. Folding his own neuroses into an adaptation of Mercedes Pinto’s autobiographical novel, Buñuel crafts an expressionistically stylized nightmare in which a young woman (Delia Garcés) discovers that the outward sophistication of her new husband (Arturo de Córdova) masks disturbing depths of jealousy and paranoia. A characteristically raw indictment of religious and social hypocrisy, ÉL stands as the director’s greatest excursion into melodrama, a vivid portrayal of society’s inability to restrain the irrational urges of the human id.
Up Next in Él
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Guillermo del Toro on ÉL
In this 2024 interview, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro discusses the importance of ÉL and its director, Luis Buñuel.
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Buñuel from E to L
This visual essay, written by scholar Jordi Xifra in 2025, serves as a primer for director Luis Buñuel’s approach to developing character. It is narrated by actor and filmmaker Gael García Bernal.
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Film in Black and White
This panel discussion about ÉL, moderated by Spanish film scholar José Luis Garci, aired on TeleMadrid in 2009.
