NOTE: This disc has a major flaw in the opening scenes:

Buñuel shot two "versions" (if you like) of the servants preparing to leave the mansion at the start of the movie, both versions happening before the guests arrive.

I'll quote some comments I elicited here:

1: Roger Ebert:

"The dinner guests arrive twice. They ascend the stairs and walk through the wide doorway, and then they arrive gain--the same guests, seen from a higher camera angle. This is a joke and soon we will understand the punch line: The guests, having so thoroughly arrived, are incapable of leaving."

2: from a Criterion poster "The correct order of shots is that the servants are leaving but see that the guests are entering the hall so they hide in another room. The guests then enter the hall, the host calls his butler and the guests go up the stairs. It then cuts to the servants in the other room who begin to leave thinking that the guests have gone upstairs but then the guests enter the hall again so they retreat back into the other room. We then see the guests entering for a second time, the host calls his butler and the guests go up the stairs."

The discs completely remove these shots/sequences, as though they were an embarrassing "mistake: on Buñuel's part. (Kind of like the two actresses in Cet Obscur Objet du Desir.) - Thanks David!

****

A fairly decent picture quality, similar to Buñuel's  Los Olvidados, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz and El, all available on DVD. The aspect ratio appears to be maintained, it is fairly clean and acceptably sharp but if you are expecting Criterion level contrast you will be disappointed... but the DVD is progressively transferred and certainly watchable, if far too blown out (brightness) for my personal taste. The audio showed a few inconsistencies and there are no supplements but , aside from a recent R4 Australian release, this is the only available DVD of this film WITH English subs - for that reason alone Buñuel fans may want to pick it up.

NOTE: This review replaced the Spanish version that had no English subs.  

Gary W. Tooze