The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)

The delirious journey of a mental disordered man, who is obsessed in making the perfect crime.

Director:

Luis Buñuel

Writers:

Luis Buñuel (screenplay & adaptation), Eduardo Ugarte (screenplay & adaptation)

Stars:

Ernesto Alonso, Miroslava, Rita Macedo

1 win & 8 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Miroslava	...	Lavinia
Ernesto Alonso	...	Archibaldo de la Cruz
Rita Macedo	...	Patricia Terrazas
Ariadne Welter	...	Carlota Cervantes (as Ariadna Welter)
Andrea Palma	...	Mrs. Cervantes
Rodolfo Landa	...	Alejandro Rivas
José María Linares-Rivas	...	Willy Corduran (as J.M. Linares Rivas)
Leonor Llausás	...	The Governess
Eva Calvo	...	Señora de la Cruz, Archibaldo's mother
Enrique Díaz Indiano	...	Señor de la Cruz, Archibaldo's father (as Enrique Indiano)
Carlos Riquelme	...	The Commissioner
Chabela Durán	...	Sister Trinidad
Carlos Martínez Baena	...	Priest (as Carlos M. Baena)
Manuel Dondé	...	Colonel at wedding
Armando Velasco	...	Judge

Storyline

With a strange and powerful obsession stemming from a pampered childhood during the tumultuous years of the Mexican Revolution, the affluent bachelor and suave ceramist, Archibaldo de la Cruz, oscillates effortlessly between fantasy and reality, desire and hallucination. Compelled to taste again and again the delicious fruit of depravity that triggers an intense dark satisfaction, Archibaldo won't shy away from using one of his many shave-ready straight razors, bent on going to great lengths to quench his lust. Undoubtedly, death encircles the scheming Archibaldo, and the targets are always innocent women; however, is he truly capable of murder?

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Plot Keywords:

dark comedy | murder confession | coincidence | mental patient | childhood memory | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Mexico

Language:

Spanish

Release Date:

19 May 1955 (Mexico)

Also Known As:

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz

Filming Locations:

Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

Company Credits

Production Co:

Alianza Cinematográfica Española

Technical Specs

Runtime:

89 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Luis Buñuel and Rodolfo Usigli worked on a screenplay together but in less than 2 weeks their ways departed because Usigli didn't want any changes made to his novel and Buñuel wasn't interested in some elements of it and would drop them.

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Connections

Featured in Live Flesh (1997)

User Reviews

EL (1952)/THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (1955) - Films Sans Frontieres DVD Review

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.