producers. It would take Aranda many years to recover ownership of this film. The experience led him to found his own production company. Aranda had bought the film rights of Gonzalo Suárez's book Trece veces Trece (Thirteen Times Thirteen) that included the short story Bailando Para Parker (Dancing for Parker). Aranda and Suárez fell out over Fata Morgana, a previous project directed by Aranda and written by Suárez, because of Suárez's dislike of the resulting film. Long in the making there were at least five different scripts and the film's ending varies from its original source: Bailando Para Parker ends in a trial that is not in The Exquisite Cadaver. Aranda found inspiration for the script in the letters of Mariana Alcoforado, including the theme of her famous letters : To die for love which is used in the sequence when the editor discovers the cadaver of his former lover. Production took off when American producers showed interest in the project and offered to co-produce the film, selling it in advance to the American market. TitleThe Exquiste Cadaver was the original title of the film, but the producers rejected it, thinking that it had little commercial appeal. Aranda then proposed to call the film Las Crueles, a title that fitted the plot, and was chosen when it was released. Years later when the film was to be broadcast on television, Aranda handed down a video transfer that still bore the original title The Exquisite Cadaver and that was also the title used when it was released on VHS. From then on the film has been better known by its original title. Exquisite corpse is a surrealist game where a group creates a poem or drawing, but with each member unknowing what the others have contributed. Analysis Director Vicente Aranda tried a more commercial approach for his third film, but he still framed it within the boundaries of the Barcelona School of Film. The first part is Hitchcockian in its development of intrigue and its macabre humor, but in the second half the mystery is explained in detail. ReceptionThe Exquisite Cadaver was one of four films made at the end of the 1960s based on stories written by Gonzalo Suárez. Antonio Ecera directed Cuerpo Presente (1965) for producer Elias Querejeta. Suárez himself wrote, produced and directed Ditirambo (1967) and Vicente Aranda made Fata Morgana and The Exquiste Cadaver. Of these four