ma-cortes "This Strange Passion" or ¨El¨ deals with Francisco (Arturo De Cordoba) is a rich man , rather strict on rules , and still a bachelor . After meeting Gloria Milata (Delia Garces), he thinks her the adequate woman and he is determined to marry her, and succeeds in winning her away from her fiancée, Raul Conde (Beristain) . The honeymoon and the following months have an unnerving effect on Gloria along with Francisco's rigid principles . She learns her husband results to be an irrationally jealous man . Francisco is a dedicated husband, but step by step his passion shows to exhibit paranoia and disturbing traits .Another film masterpiece by the director of the prize-winning "The Young and the Damned" , being shot in three weeks by the great Luis Buñuel who even makes a cameo appearance as one of the monks. This rare movie is largely considered a Luis Buñuel's masterpiece . It is packed with thought-provoking drama, surreal moments , jealousy , criticism , paranoia and religious elements about Catholic Church ; furthermore Buñuel satirizies and outright attacks bourgeois lifestyles . Good acting by Arturo De Cordoba as the wealthy, religious and leery middle-aged Francisco Galván as well as Delia Garces as suffering spouse . This splendid Buñuel film was nominated Grand Prize in Cannes Film Festival (1953). Good and atmospheric cinematography by excellent Mexican cameraman Gabriel Figueroa , though being necessary a perfect remastering .The motion picture was stunningly directed by the genius Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. He subsequently produced ¨Don Quintin Amargado¨ , ¨El Bruto¨, El¨, ¨Abismos De Pasion¨ , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , among others . But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . After returning his native country, Spain, by making 'Viridiana' but this film was prohibited on the grounds of blasphemy, then Buñuel with his screenwriter Julio Alejandro go back Mexico where realizes in low budget 'Simon of the desert' and produced by Gustavo Alatriste . Buñuel went on directing in France where filmed other masterpieces such as ¨Belle De Jour¨, "The Milky Way" , "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" , "The Phantom of Liberty" , his last picture was "That Obscure Object of Desire" shot in Spain .

cstotlar-1 I've wanted to see this film for years but have missed it several times in the past. This time I picked it up on You Tube of all places so now I've seen all of Bunuel's "Mexican" films. I suppose I was hoping for more. Some of the earliest Mexican films were pretty standard fare - not much to be detected from "L'Age d'Or" or anything like that. Bunuel had to cooperate with the standard melodramas of the day to get his films made in Mexico. Occasionally his special eccentricities would come out of the woodwork but not often enough for me. This film was released by Columbia Pictures which means Harry Cohn and Cohn was truly a monster for any director to work with. There are some pot shots at the church throughout and "l'amour fou" so close to the director but there was precious little humor in this one.I felt the film didn't always know where to go. It describes obsession in detail and conveys it extremely well with talented performances. The "Vertigo" stretch was a bit much for me. Both films dealt with obsessive men and had scenes in bell towers but there couldn't be any mistaking Bunuel for Hitchcock or the other way around, nor how the two directors treated it in such vastly different ways.Curtis Stotlar.

Claudio Carvalho In Mexico, the wealthy, religious and leery middle-aged Francisco Galván (Arturo de Córdova) is battling in the justice to retrieve the possession of real-estates that belonged to his ancestors in the beginning of the Twentieth Century. When he sees the young Gloria Milalta (Delia Garcés) in the church, he becomes obsessed by the woman, unsuccessfully courting and stalking her. He follows her and sees Gloria with her fiancé and his acquaintance, the engineer Raul Conde, having lunch in a restaurant. Francisco schedules a ball in his mansion and invites Raul and along the night, he seduces Gloria. They get married and in the honeymoon, Gloria discovers that Francisco is virgin and has a sick jealousy for her. Along the years, the emotionally unbalanced Francisco oscillates between a passionate husband and a disturbed paranoid until the day Gloria leaves him and he has a mental breakdown. "El" is a very simple and melodramatic film of Luis Buñuel about sick jealousy and paranoia. The plot shows the usual trademark of this great director, with religious element and the surrealistic paranoia of the lead character in the church, but is not original like most of his features. Arturo de Córdova and Delia Garcés have stunning performances, giving credibility to their characters. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Alucinado" ("The Hallucinated One")

zetes SLIGHT SPOILERSEl is similar in style to other productions made by Bunuel in Mexico. It reminded me of both Los Olvidados and Nazarin. Unlike in the early or late films, the style is more realistic and more akin to melodrama. In fact, all three of these films each contain a single surrealist scene. Los Olvidados has the dream, Nazarin has the fantasy where the wife bites off her husband's lower lip, and El has, well, El's surrealist moment comes near the end and is too good to give away. If you've seen the film, I'm sure you know to what I refer. El can be divided up into three easily identifiable sections, each about a half-hour each. The first is told from the point of view of an aristocrat who catches sight of a beautiful woman in church. It's love at first sight, but he soon finds out that she is the wife of a friend of his. At this point, I was fully expecting a cheapy adulterous romance picture, a soap opera. That was the genre that was dominating Mexican cinemas at the time. Luckily, the film doesn't follow a predictable route. There is at this point an elipsis of time, as that first man runs into the woman. He innocently offers her a ride home. Grudgingly, she accepts. On the ride home, she tells him of how her husband's jealously is destroying her. He's an extremely paranoid man, and he has actually threatened to murder her on two separate occasions. She finds opposition everywhere as she is looking for help. The third section of the film is told from the point of view of the husband. His jealousy is starting to lead him off a cliff. The title of the film actually refers to him. "El" is the masculine, singular, definite article in Spanish.Bunuel had a gift for endings. El's is as good as that of Nazarin or Viridiana. By the way, a bit of trivia about that final image: the actor in the cloak at the end of the film, walking down the path, is not the same one who played Francisco in the rest of the film. It's Bunuel. 9/10.