The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955). 1h 29m | Not Rated

“The delirious journey of a mental disordered man (Archibaldo de la Cruz) , who is obsessed in making the perfect crime. As boy, Archibaldo witnesses his governessu0026#39; death and is fascinated by what he feels . As a man heu0026#39;s obsessed with murder and dying . Undoubtedly, death encircles the always obsessed Archibaldo, and the targets are ordinarily unfortunate women (Miroslava who subsequenly committed suicide , Rita Macedo, Ariadna Welter).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eA bitter and attractive diatribe about a boy who seeing the death of his governess has a lasting effect on his adult life , as he grows up to be a demented cretin -well played by Ernesto Alonso- whose failure with women leads him to conspire to kill every one he meets , a task at which he also fails . Buñuel marshals all of his characteristic amoral wit in this story of a would-be murderer at every turn in his efforts to get his kicks from a unsuccessful sex murder . This is an enjoyable but minor psychological drama from Buñuel in Spanish with English subtitles , dealing with a strange and powerful obsession stemming from a pampered childhood . As usual, the Spaniard master schews the visual fussiness of style , opting for the straightforward camera set-up at all times. The use of props like the toy music box from his infancy which triggers off Archibaldou0026#39;s lust and the wax dummy burned one of his attempts is thwarted , is all the more hilarious and surprising as a result .u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis agreeable motion picture was produced in short budget by Roberto Figueroa and Alfonso Patiño Gómez ; being compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This Buñuelu0026#39;s peculiar film belongs to his Mexican period ; in fact , itu0026#39;s plenty of known Mexican actors . Born in Calanda , Aragon (1900) , Buñuel then moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca . After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance of the surrealist Dalí, he made his first film , a 17-minute short titled u0026quot;Un Chien Andalouu0026quot; (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and abstract plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent u0026quot;Age of Goldu0026quot; (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and in the pre-Spanish Civil War , he made the documentary ¨Las Hurdes¨(1933) , the Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . He subsequently started his Mexican period and he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming u0026quot;The Great Madcapu0026quot; , ¨The brute¨, u0026quot;Wuthering Heightsu0026quot;, ¨El¨ , u0026quot;The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruzu0026quot; , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . Rating u0026quot;Criminal life of Archibaldo de la Cruzu0026quot; : 6.5/10 , decent movie , but much too talky , it sounds far more interesting than it plays.”