The characters pace in front of the open door. There is an invisible line they cannot cross. Soldiers are ordered to enter the house, but cannot. A child runs boldly toward the house, and scampers away again. Whatever inhibits the guests inhibits their rescuers.
Guests snatch an ax from the wall and break through plaster to open a pipe for drinking water.
Two lovers kill themselves. The bodies are stacked in a closet. There are whiffs of black magic. Bunuel belongs to a group of great directors who obsessively reworked the themes that haunted them. Bunuel was born in 1900, so the dates of his films correspond to the years of his life.