La vie criminelle d'Archibald de la Cruz

Handsome and well-heeled Archibaldo has been convinced from boyhood that he possesses a music box that has the power to kill. He embarks upon a career as a serial murderer in which his intended victims are ravishing looking females but Fate continually thwarts his lethal intentions and his murders never get past the fantasy stage.

The most notorious scene in the film and one of which only this director is capable, is where Archibaldo consigns to the flames of a kiln a wax model of one of his potential victims who has slipped through his grasp. This macabre episode has acquired a tragically ironic overtone as the woman who has modelled for the dummy is played by Miroslava Stern who was cremated shortly after filming completed, having taken her own life. Bunuel was of course to employ a 'prosthetic limb' to great effect in 'Tristana'.

Working within the budgetary limitations of Mexican cinema, director Luis Bunuel has fashioned a stylish, sophisticated and technically polished piece that contains some delicious performances and bizarre Bunuelian moments that linger long in the memory.

Although condemned by circumstances to being innocent of murder Archibaldo still feels the need to 'confess' to the police. He is politely dismissed by a detective with the words:"thinking about murdering someone does not constitute a crime." This will strike a chord with most of us I am sure!

Following your advice, I recently `relented' to buying from Alapage the two Luis Bunuel Double-Feature discs released in France by Film Sans Frontieres. After watching them in their entirety, I cannot believe that I, who consider Bunuel my all-time favorite director and one of the true masters of the medium, have waited this long to acquire these DVDs. Actually while Alapage listed these DVDs at EUR25.73 on their site, they only cost me EUR21.51 each (excluding EUR12 shipping charges). So, if there is still anybody who has not purchased them yet, now may be the time to do so!

Since I had never watched EL (1952) before, it was the first one to go through my DVD player. It was a chilling parable of an insanely jealous middle-aged man played with acute intensity by Arturo De Cordova. It afforded Bunuel ample opportunity to make practical use of overt Freudian symbolism without lending the film a heavy-handed air of pretentiousness. While there are some critics who consider it as merely `an engaging, minor work', I regard it as being among Bunuel's finest; arguably, with this film, Bunuel reached the culmination of his work in Mexico, but it also looks forward to similar sequences and themes he would tackle later on in his career, especially TRISTANA (1970) and, his last film, THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977).

EL was beautifully abetted by another of his low-budget Mexican films, the great black comedy THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (1955). Again, critical reception was a bit muted in some circles, dismissing it as `just a throwaway oddity' typical of Bunuel's films of the period. However, it is much more than that: it is certainly very funny if you can accept its macabre sense of humor. It allowed Bunuel to create some of the most memorable images in all of his films, especially the celebrated dummy incineration scene, which could have been "inspired" by a similar scene in Michael Curtiz's marvelous MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) which Bunuel must have seen while working at Warner Bros. in the Thirties. A similar instance of this eclectic approach on Bunuel's part can be found in the "walking hand" sequence in his THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962) - one of my favorite Bunuels - which harks back to an identical premise in Robert Florey's THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946), another Warner Bros. horror melodrama. For me, one of the enduring assets of THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ is the charm and great beauty that was Miroslava Stern (who played the part of Lavinia and was the model for the ill-fated dummy). Tragically, she would take her own life a mere two weeks after the film's release with her body, ironically enough, ending up cremated!

Both the print utilized and the transfer for both films were adequate enough, and perfectly acceptable under the circumstances. However, EL's overall visual and aural qualities where distinctly superior to those of ARCHIBALDO which suffered from excessive specks and slight audio dropouts at times, but were never so alarming as to dispel from one's viewing pleasure of the film.

Perhaps my favorite of Buñuel's Mexican years. As a child, Archibaldo de la Cruz willed the death of his young, sexy nanny through the device of a magical music box. As an adult, he finds this box at a pawn shop, and it awakens the exciting feelings he had as he stood over the corpse of his nanny checking out her exposed thigh. He decides to become a serial killer, but it never quite works out that way. Every person he sets out to kill ends up being murdered by another's hand. Actually, I shouldn't say "person," as Archibaldo's violent emotions only arise towards women. There is some heavy Catholic symbology to the picture, and the violence towards women obviously arises from the twisted mores of Catholicism. His first intended victim as an adult, for example, is a brazen tramp who openly expresses her wish to seduce him to get back at her husband. Buñuel had perhaps the most impeccable sense for creating finales, and the one here is as odd and remarkable as any other. Watch the two actions Archibaldo performs with his cane. I'm not 100% sure what they signify, but I know that must be of the utmost importance. Ensayo de un crimen should be watched back to back with Buñuel's 1953 film, Él, also about a man being driven insane over his wife because of his strict religious beliefs. 10/10.

Again, Bunuel explores the disturbing mentality of a member of the privileged class. The premise is very amusing: a would-be serial killer whose attempts are constantly thwarted by circumstance. The film has some wonderful touches like the demented music box theme, the fantasies when Archie gets in one of his murderous moods, and again a focus on the lower half of the female form. Ernesto Alonso and the entire cast are terrific. However, the film does have a certain sluggishness to it, and the first two acts in particular seem to contain a lot of superfluous material that doesn't add much to the whole. I also feel the ending could use more of a cynical bite to it. Still, it's better than a lot of his 50's work, if not quite as remarkable as EL or LOS OLVIDADOS.

I have often cited this as my favourite Bunuel film and one of my favourite films of all. Watching it again after a period of some years, I am surprised that it seems so light and amusing instead of dark and dangerous. I suppose this is partly because when first seen the misogyny, the gleefulness at the prospect of killing a woman, is so shocking, that we notice less the playfulness. Whereas on a subsequent viewing we are less affected, having some idea how things pan out. Is this the only Bunuel film with a seemingly happy ending? There are still, of course, many shocking moments, like the bloody/sexy death of the woman looking after him as a child, the whole business concerning the mannequins (that seems burned in my memory for ever) and the most surprising early death of the nun/nurse. Maybe it's partly that when I watched this in my youth I rightly saw it as stunningly original and displaying conduct contrary to that shown elsewhere, whereas now the old cynic in me has been exposed to much more and is smiling throughout with barely a pause for a gasp. Always going to be fun to watch though.