1289 Él

[domino harvey]

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.

Mexico
1953
93 minutes
Black & White
1.37:1
Spanish
Spine #1289

New 4K digital restoration, supervised by photographer Gabriel Figueroa Flores, director of photography Gabriel Figueroa’s son, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
New video essay on director Luis Buñuel by scholar Jordi Xifra
Appreciation by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
Interview with Buñuel from 1981 by writer Jean-Claude Carrière, a longtime collaborator of the director's
Panel discussion from 2009, moderated by filmmaker José Luis Garci
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Fernanda Solórzano and an interview with Buñuel by critics José de la Colina and Tomás Pérez Turrent

[ryannichols7]

as much as I wanted a full box set here, I'm happy my favorite Buñuel is getting the 4K treatment. amazed it's before Los Oliviados

[Blutarsky]

as much as I wanted a full box set here, I'm happy my favorite Buñuel is getting the 4K treatment. amazed it's before Los Oliviados

It’s shocking that they didn’t do a box set, considering there are fairly recent restorations of Los Olvidados and Nazarin from 2019. But, at least we are FINALLY getting some more Mexican Buñuel work on disc, let alone 4K!

[MichaelB]

Wonderful news! I assume it's the same restoration that I saw in Bologna three years ago.

[mteller]

Ah, I can finally retire my import El/Archibaldo de la Cruz DVD.

[Matt]

Ah, I can finally retire my import El/Archibaldo de la Cruz DVD.

I somehow missed that a Blu-ray of Archibaldo de la Cruz even existed

[swo17]

That release garnered some discussion here on the grounds of initially misspelling the director's name

[ryannichols7]

Ah, I can finally retire my import El/Archibaldo de la Cruz DVD.

I somehow missed that a Blu-ray of Archibaldo de la Cruz even existed

holding out for a Radiance release, personally. Fran hasn't ruled it out like he has Él and Los Oliviados

[Black Hat]

What a great, great film this is.

[FrauBlucher]

DVDBeaver...Wow, even his screenshots make this look outstanding

[kekid]

holding out for a Radiance release, personally. Fran hasn't ruled it out like he has Él and Los Oliviados

Who do we think is likely to release Los Olvidados? Criterion?

[Blutarsky]

My money is on Criterion. The World Cinema Project restored Los Olvodados for Cannes back in 2019(?) and considering their relationship with Criterion I can’t imagine another label putting this out.

It is funny though, because L’Age D’or and Nazarin were also restored for the same Cannes festival, and I don’t know if those were also WCP restorations or released physically?

[A Tempted Christ]

L’Âge d’or:

Restored in 2019 in 4K by Cinémathèque française, Centre Pompidou and MNAM-CCI/Service du cinéma expérimental with funding provided by Pathé and Maison de Champagne Piper-Heidsieck at Hiventy (image) and L.E. Diapason (sound) laboratories

Nazarín:

3K Scan and 3K Digital Restoration from the original 35mm image negative (preserved by Televisa) and prints positive materials from Cineteca Nacional. Restoration made and financed by Cineteca Nacional Mexico. Mastered in 2K for Digital Projection. Right-holder and French distributor: Mégalys.

Elephant Films released Nazarín on Blu-ray in France that year. Review and caps here.

[ryannichols7]

I was in New York last week and was stunned to discover a clip of L'Age d'Or playing on a loop in perpetuity at MoMA (in the same room as Dali's The Persistence of Memory), and it even credits that new restoration exactly as you posted it. wild how we can have it playing so constantly but still not have a disc for it. hopefully soon..

[A Tempted Christ]

From Ritrovato's page for the film:

The 4K restoration was undertaken drawing on the original nitrate camera negatives and other conservation elements. Given that certain frames of the nitrate elements were decomposing and therefore unusable, it is only thanks to the analogue restoration carried out in 1993 by the Centre Pompidou that these scenes could be recovered and substituted into the new restoration. A projection copy from the era was also used as a reference for calibration. A wet-gate scan was performed on the original camera negative while the sound was restored to reflect the original, still imperfect post-synchronisation techniques used in 1930. The restoration of the variable density soundtrack – recorded at the time in the Films Sonores Tobis Paris studios, located in the Éclair laboratories – was carried out in the L.E. Diapason studio. Both institutions wanted to restore the film respecting the original sound format, 1.20, and conserving the defects introduced during the filming process: haloes, dark patches, development marks, superimpositions and hairs and scratches introduced during the shoot. The decision was made not to correct these. Several shots taken from repertory footage appear grainier and more scratched when compared to the beauty of newly shot sequences. The visibility of such defects in the restored copy reflects the context in which the film was made and the experimentalism of the original shoot. The Cinémathèque française also restored two other films by Luis Buñuel, Un chien andalou and Las hurdes.

An Early Buñuel boxset featuring all three films would be nice, but I'm not sure it's anywhere near the top of Criterion's list. Radiance maybe?

[therewillbeblus]

I forgot how tonally odd this film is, beginning with a curious approach to traditional melodrama before gradually manifesting menace and absurdity and then eventual irony as the relationship progresses. At a certain point the comedy clicks, but it takes a while to arrive there. All around a tremendous feat by Bunuel, keeping his audience invested in one kind of picture before twisting it into another horrifying and hilarious concoction. Bringing everything back full circle to the Church at the end appears to move from micro to macro attacks, but the connection between erratic behavior and Catholic doctrines had been established long before then.

[tolbs1010]

I forgot how tonally odd this film is

It really is. The material itself is kind of one-note--the same thing happens again and again with increasing intensity. Buñuel's shifting tones and emphases are necessary to keep it interesting. This is not one of my favorites from his Mexican period, and the re-watch on this nice-looking 4K confirmed that for me. I can think of at least 4 of his films from this era that I prefer. Yet, the final shot of Él is one of his greatest. The comic irony(?) of it perfectly bookends the great opening scene and enlarges the themes that the script sledgehammers.

The Buñuel interview with Carrière that is included in the Criterion release is worth the purchase by itself. Buñuel speaks very briefly about his own fondness for this film.

[therewillbeblus]

this nice-looking 4K

I wasn’t enamored with the 4K presentation, and couldn’t differentiate the PQ from the blu-ray. The source material clearly has its limitations, so no complaints, but I was surprised by how shoddy the 4K looked

[Murdoch]

This certainly lacks the bite of Bunuel's later work. The priest kissing the altar boy's feet at the start gives a glimpse of Bunuel's humor, but the majority of the film is a pretty run-of-the-mill melodrama that doesn't go as wild with Francisco's paranoia as it could have.

Spoiler

I thought the moment he tried to throw Gloria from a bell tower, it was about to go off the rails. Unfortunately it grounds itself again afterward by having the couple back at their house, pretending that everything is right as rain.

To the film's credit, it does track the exhaustion of living through an abusive relationship, with the couple cohabitating in misery despite Francisco's emotional and physical abuse of Gloria, with every new insult or attack by Francisco attempted to be suppressed by returning to the monotony of their household. And Francisco's pathetic neediness is played brilliantly by Arturo de Córdova, especially during that scene where he neck slaps (???) one of Gloria's perceived admirers, only to be swiftly knocked down by the guy. And how Francisco is idolized by everyone around him, especially the priests, I loved.

But I think this is a film I like more for what it says than how it says it. Francisco is a pathetic and tiring character, and the time dedicated to him and his court case is a bore. Much like Gloria, I just wanted out of that household.