There is no music whatsoever in the film.
One scene in the film that audiences obsessed over was the one in which an Asian client entered the brothel with a mysterious box containing an unknown object that is never revealed. When he opens the box to show the prostitutes what is inside, Séverine is the only one who agrees to an encounter while the others turn away in horror. Luis Buñuel found that the most common question people asked him about the film later concerned the contents of the box. It was a question he found "senseless...I can't count the number of times people (particularly women) have asked me what was in the box, but since I myself have no idea, I usually reply, 'Whatever you want there to be.'"
According to Luis Buñuel scholar Julie Jones, Buñuel once said that he himself didn't know what the end exactly means.
Before the film was released, Luis Buñuel was pressured to make some cuts for the censors, which he later came to regret. "The Hakims told me, 'By letting the censors cut one thing, you keep them from cutting even more,'" said Buñuel. He was especially bothered to have to cut the scene between Séverine and the Duke (Georges Marchal). Originally, the scene had Séverine lying in a coffin in a private chapel after a Mass with a "splendid" copy of one of Grünewald's Christ paintings clearly visible on the wall. "The suppression of the Mass," he said, "completely changes the character of this scene." The scene, he said, "had more value with the painting of the Grünewald Christ, which is the most terrible image of Christ...It was painted in a ferociously realistic style. This image was important because it prepared the audience for the next scene." An edited version of the scene stayed in the film, but to Buñuel, it lacked the same impact without the original imagery.
When the Duke (Georges Marchal) arrives by carriage at the outdoor cafe, he pauses beside a table at which Luis Buñuel and another man are sipping coffee.
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