El (This Strange Passion)

When a beautiful woman tells of her husband's violent jealousy, the story is usually interesting. But if the husband's jealousy develops into paranoia, her story also becomes frightening.

Arturo De Cordova portrays the husband with the proper combination of brutality and sympathy. When he apologizes after a jealous fit or pounds the floor in frustration after failing to kill his wife, Cordova is a powerfully tragic figure. As his wife, Delia Garces seems sufficiently trapped by her love and her fear of this man. She is terrified when neither her padre nor her mother will believe her story.

If her own mother does not believe her, it is understandable why the audience sometimes wonders about the credibility of the husband's behavior. Flimsy flashbacks and lack of continuity reinforce this weakness: The photography can also be criticized for rarely presenting a true white or black on the screen. But director Luis Bunel and photographer Garbriel Figueroa redeem themselves in the climactic scene where the husband's contact with reality slips and the camera sees the world through his eyes. The result is frightening. It also makes the end anticlimactic.

Most of the film's difficulties derive from the attempt to squeeze the distintegration of a deep and powerful personality into eighty minutes. The picture still manages to be a spine tingler.