The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)
(Ensayo de un crimen)
Country: MEX
Technical: bw/1.37:1 89m
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Ernesto Alonso, Miroslava, Rita Macedo, Ariadne Welter
Synopsis:
An over-indulged child forms the conviction that a music box empowers him to 'wish someone dead'. In adult life he sets to work as a serial killer of a string of beautiful women, but each time fate takes a hand before he can put his schemes into action.
Review:
Deliciously transgressive Buñuel take on Hitchcock, albeit with a somewhat confused premise/motivation. Does the hero's obsessive fetishising of glamorous women render him impotent sexually? If not, whence his relative lack of erotic interest in them? How, then, to reconcile the glib 'I am cured' resolution of his malady? Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here, including a free-ranging approach to narrative that prefigures the Carrière scripts later on.
(Ensayo de un crimen)
Country: MEX
Technical: bw/1.37:1 89m
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Ernesto Alonso, Miroslava, Rita Macedo, Ariadne Welter
Synopsis:
An over-indulged child forms the conviction that a music box empowers him to 'wish someone dead'. In adult life he sets to work as a serial killer of a string of beautiful women, but each time fate takes a hand before he can put his schemes into action.
Review:
Deliciously transgressive Buñuel take on Hitchcock, albeit with a somewhat confused premise/motivation. Does the hero's obsessive fetishising of glamorous women render him impotent sexually? If not, whence his relative lack of erotic interest in them? How, then, to reconcile the glib 'I am cured' resolution of his malady? Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here, including a free-ranging approach to narrative that prefigures the Carrière scripts later on.
(Ensayo de un crimen)
Country: MEX
Technical: bw/1.37:1 89m
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Ernesto Alonso, Miroslava, Rita Macedo, Ariadne Welter
Synopsis:
An over-indulged child forms the conviction that a music box empowers him to 'wish someone dead'. In adult life he sets to work as a serial killer of a string of beautiful women, but each time fate takes a hand before he can put his schemes into action.
Review:
Deliciously transgressive Buñuel take on Hitchcock, albeit with a somewhat confused premise/motivation. Does the hero's obsessive fetishising of glamorous women render him impotent sexually? If not, whence his relative lack of erotic interest in them? How, then, to reconcile the glib 'I am cured' resolution of his malady? Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here, including a free-ranging approach to narrative that prefigures the Carrière scripts later on.