In Luis Buñuel’s darkly comic psychodrama, a reawakened childhood memory convinces rich, cultured Archibaldo that he is able to cause the death of others. But his murderous impulses are frustrated at every turn, driving him to find ever more inventive ways to fulfill his desires.
A key work of his Mexican period, Buñuel’s gloriously twisted film anticipates his later works with an ambiguous tale of bourgeois hysteria, transgression and erotic obsession. Full of pitch-black humour and surrealist flourishes, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz is an unjustly neglected gem from one of cinema’s greatest artists.
Our region-free Blu-ray edition presents Luis Buñuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz from Cineteca Nacional México's 4K restoration. Extras include video essays by Cristina Álvarez López and David Wilt, a gallery of Buñuel’s personal annotated script, and a booklet with writing by Jordi Xifra and Cristina Álvarez López.
• The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de un crimen, 1955) presented from the 4K restoration by Cineteca Nacional México.
• Surreal Frames: A three-part video series by writer and filmmaker Cristina Álvarez López investigating the development and key phases of Buñuel’s filmography.
• Film historian professor David Wilt’s visual essay on The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz and Buñuel’s Mexican films.
• Luis Buñuel’s annotated personal script of the film.
(BD-Rom content)
• 24-page booklet featuring writing by film scholar and Buñuel expert Jordi Xifra, and also Cristina Álvarez López.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C).
• UK premiere release on Blu-ray.
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Screenplay by Luis Buñuel, Eduardo Ugarte Pagés
Inspired by the novel 'Ensayo de un crimen' by Rodolfo Usigli
Producer - Alfonso Patiño Gómez
Cinematography - Agustín Jiménez
Editor - Jorge Bustos
Music - Jorge Pérez
Production Design - Jesús Bracho
Sound - Ernesto Caballero, Rodolfo Benitez, Enrique Rodriguez
Cast
Ernesto Alonso - Archibaldo de la Cruz
Miroslava - Lavinia
Rita Macedo - Patricia Terrazas
Ariadna Welter - Carlota Cervantes
Rafael Banquells Jr. - young Archibaldo
Andrea Palma - Mrs Cervantes
Rodolfo Landa - Alejandro Rivas
José María Linares-Rivas - Willy Corduran
Leonor Llausás - Governess
1957 Cahiers du Cinéma - Top 10 Films of the Year
1956 Winner: Ariel Awards, Mexico / Best Cinematography - Agustín Jiménez
1956 Nominated: Ariel Awards, Mexico / Best Film
1956 Nominated: Ariel Awards, Mexico / Best Director
1956 Nominated: Ariel Awards, Mexico / Best Screenplay
1956 Nominated: Ariel Awards, Mexico / Best Actor
1956 Nominated: Ariel Awards, Mexico / Best Supporting Actor -
“Buñuel’s gleefully perverse mock melodrama…Against a background of revolution and restoration, Catholic mysteries and aristocratic manners, Buñuel unfolds, in images akin to Freudian X-rays, the repressed desires that respectable society both embodies and conceals. In Archibaldo’s gloriously imagined, carefully planned, and meticulously staged schemes, the art of murder and the art of movies appear to be closely aligned” Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“A twisted tragi-comedy on male obsession [...] the closest Spanish auteur Luis Buñuel ever came to directing a bona fide suspense thriller” Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
“Archibaldo is the film that really begins his extraordinarily productive late period... "Archibaldo" is Buñuel in the peak form with which he has continued to dazzle us in recent years. [...] it has the wit, the simplicity of style, the directness and, above all, the total command that make his later films seem virtually perfect realizations of the director's particular visions”
Vincent Canby, New York Times
“Remains one of Buñuel's most enjoyably macabre oddities. Among the few outstanding pictures of his post-Él period [...] this rich mixture of real and abstract, real and imagined, with a perfect balance maintained between morbid wit and blood-stained drama by keeping the macabre elements this side of unpleasantness. [...] putting over his distinctive view of a savage, disillusioned and rebellious humanism through an hypnotically powerful imagery; and, in fact, this film provides yet another reminder that Buñuel's is one of the few truly individual visions in the cinema”
Robert Vas, Monthly Film Bulletin, December 1960
“For a supposedly commercial film, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz is a deeply strange film, comparable as a psychological portrait to Belle du Jour, Diary of a Chambermaid and Viridiana... it can easily withstand comparison to Buñuel's best. [...] enchantingly unique and remarkable even a minor work from the Spanish Surrealist truly is. An unjustly neglected film from one of cinema's all-time greats”
Christopher Funderburg, Pink Smoke
“The central work of Buñuel's career, a midpoint between the early savagery and the later urbanity” CinePassion
“Buñuel marshals all of his characteristic amoral wit in this tale of a would-be murderer... stunning (and hilarious) as a result” Time Out
