La hija del engaño (The Daughter of Deceit). 1951. Mexico. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Screenplay by Luis Alcoriza, Buñuel. With Fernando Soler, Alicia Caro, Rubén Rojo, Andrés Soler. In Spanish; English subtitles. 35mm. 80 min.
Working again with Fernando Soler, Buñuel returned to a play, Don Quentin el armargao, that he had originally adapted (without credit) as a commercial film in Spain in 1935. Soler is a struggling businessman who comes to believe that his wife has been unfaithful to him and his daughter is not his; embittered, he opens a nightclub where the principal attraction seems to be his own anger and resentment . Soler, usually cast as a lovable everyman, clearly relishes the opportunity to play a villain and Buñuel is happy to come up with ever more perverse cruelties for him to perform – until he discovers that his behavior is based on a lie. Buñuel includes some broadly comic elements – involving Soler’s two bumbling henchmen – and even a musical number by the voluptuous Amparo Garrido, soon to become a fixture of Mexico’s telenovelas.