Él (This Strange Passion)

Quentin Tarantino isn’t the first filmmaker with a foot fetish. Luis Buñuel made his predilection obvious in many films, and blatantly so in the opening minutes of Él (Him), when wealthy bachelor Arturo de Córdova (of course!) is smitten by the ankles of Gloria (Delia Garcés) as she takes communion in Church. Although she is engaged to his friend, Francisco courts her passionately and they are married. But on their wedding night she discovers the nasty bag of psychosis hiding behind his genteel facade.

Made in 1953, this is an early film about an abusive husband, and very precisely drawn from Gloria’s perspective. Those who knew him best would attest that Buñuel shared some attributes with his anti-hero here, but Francisco could never have been capable of such empathy, or distance, for that matter. The shocking climax — circling back to the church — is one of the most memorable and outrageous sequences in Buñuel’s extraordinary career.

DCP Courtesy of Janus Films

One of the great films from Luis Buñuel’s Mexican period and, along with Los olvidados and L’age d’or, the one in which the old surrealist seems closest to de Sade. Contains some of Buñuel’s most brilliantly conceived moments of black humour.

Don Druker, Chicago Reader

With eerie point-of-view shots, Buñuel gets inside the mind of a madman whose sadism is inseparable from his high social position; his commanding manner mirrors the folly and the cruelty of society at large.

Richard Brody, The New Yorker