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| Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment |
It goes without saying that Spanish-Mexican born
writer-director Luis Buñuel is one of the most important film surrealists (if
not the single most important) who ever walked the Earth. Eons ahead of his time, unveiling with Salvador
Dalí his timelessly bizarre short shocker Un Chien Andalou in 1929
before further ascending the ladders of subversive cinematic provocation in the
years since including but not limited to L'Age d'Or and near the end of
his career That Obscure Object of Desire. An intellectual provocateur whose ushering into
modern cinema of such tawdry psychosexual taboos and incongruent juxtapositions
that defy rational explanation, embarking on the cinema of Luis Buñuel is like
diving down a bottomless rabbit hole where you emerge perhaps changed but not
sure if you ever actually awakened from his flickering nightmares.
A multifaceted filmmaker who never quite fit into the
sandbox or played nice with others, during his tenure in Mexico in what is
considered to be the ‘Golden Age of Mexican Cinema’ the filmmaker in 1955 unveiled
the closest thing he has yet made to a genre suspense thriller with loose hints
of giallo, the serial killer film and loose overtones of fetishism that would
blossom in his later subsequent provocations: Ensayo du un crimen,
translated to Rehearsal for a Murder or as it was titled in the west The
Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.
Something of an impish rumination on the brooding thoughts of a
sociopath who things a lot about killing but always wrestles with his
inclinations when confronted by the actual act, the film while not nearly as
surreal as his earlier works nevertheless is clearly borne out of the heart and
soul of the rough-around-the-edges Spanish dreamer of the dreams.
In Mexico in the early 1900s during the height of the
Mexican Revolution, a spoiled brat child witnesses his governess being shot to
death amid a raid immediately after sharing a fable with him involving a music
box his mother just gave him. Due to the
unusual timing of the chain of events, the boy named Archibaldo de la Cruz concludes
there and then he is responsible for her death caused by the music box and as
he grows into an adult played by Ernesto Alonso, his unfulfilled burning desire
to commit a murder only grows stronger with each day. As an adult, armed with a straight razor, Archibaldo
relays his childhood past to a nun which he then threatens with said razor,
causing her to back into an open elevator shaft and fall to her death. When called in for questioning about the
incident, Archibaldo claims responsibility for her death with further
assertions even more victims met their end with him.
An ensemble piece arguably predating Mary Harron’s American
Psycho in terms of how often the protagonist in voiceover narration thinks,
plots and fantasizes about killing while hesitating to act in the moment of
truth, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz while considerably
tamer than the still shocking sensory assaults unleashed by Un Chien Andalou
manages to pack a punch anyway. Co-written
with Buñuel by Eduardo Ugarte and Rodolfo Usigli based on his novel, the film
was made at the height of an economic collapse for the Mexican film industry
and production was nearly shut down a few times. Known by some as the last film of actress
Miroslava who plays a model for mannequins Archibaldo begins pursuing, many
have compared the somewhat more straightforward Buñuel effort to Alfred
Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
Mostly told in flashback during the investigation of Archibaldo,
the film with Buñuel’s editors Jorge Busto and Pablo Gómez jumps in and out of
past and present with frequent flourishes into abstract pure surrealism for transitions,
shot beautifully in 1.33:1 by El bruto cinematographer Agustín Jiménez
and backlit by an eerie theremin soundtrack by Hellish Spiders composer Jorge
Pérez, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz keeps you the viewer
with Archibaldo on your toes as neither we nor himself are certain of what he’s
capable of. Filled with numerous director
trademarks that would come up later like an open wound bleeding freely, silk
stockings and stilettos, avarice and psychosexual obsession, while not nearly
as provocative as Diary of a Chambermaid or The Milky Way it
finds its ways to offend.
Ernesto Alonso does an excellent job of basically playing a
perverse maladjusted creep, damaged since childhood unable to move past into emotional
maturity much in the same way Bob Hoskins’ killer in Atom Egoyan’s Felicia’s
Journey is stuck in infancy. Including
an ensemble cast including Rita Macedo as a battered girlfriend, Ariadna Welter
as a religious woman, and Miroslava as a model for mannequins culminating in a
most haunted vista of a mannequin being cremated, the film features pitch
perfect performances largely guided by the deft hand of its ingenious
director. For all of the performative
gifts provided by the film’s cast, the real star in this endeavor is Buñuel
himself.
Previously lost to time before being unearthed and fully
restored frame by frame in 4K by the Mexican Cinematheque from the original
35mm camera negatives and released by VCI Entertainment, the presentation is quite good and offers newcomers to Buñuel
and Mexican surrealist cinema in general a chance to see one of the master’s
lesser-known efforts. A film more about
the thoughts percolating in the mind of a would be serial killer than a
straightforward character study, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz is
curious for how closely it flirts with sex and death without completely going
all the way and showcases one of Buñuel’s few somewhat more user friendly
efforts.
An important slice of Mexican
cinema and building block in Buñuel’s career leading towards what would or
would not become Diary of a Chambermaid, the film won’t be for all
tastes but for fans of the serial killer film, the psychosexual thriller and
the pure cinematic surrealist abstractions of Buñuel’s visual art, its a
clandestine little gem.
--Andrew Kotwicki
