Archived: The criminal life of Archibald de la Cruz

The criminal life of Archibald de la Cruz

Ensayo d'un crimen, fiction, crime drama, Mexico, 1955

DIRECTED BY: Luis Buñuel

ROLE:

Miroslava (Lavinia) Ernesto Alonso (Archibaldo de la Cruz) Rita Macedo (Patricia Terrazas) Ariadne Welter (Carlota Cervantes) Andrea Palma (Mrs. Cervantes) Rodolfo Landa (Alejandro Rivas)

SCRIPT: Luis Buñuel, Eduardo Ugarte (based on a novel by Rodolfo Usigli)

PHOTOGRAPHY: Agustín Jiménez

MUSIC: Jorge Pérez

EDITING: Agustín Jiménez

CONTENT:

The wealthy and respectable Archibaldo de la Cruz as a boy witnessed the death of his nanny during the Mexican Revolution, just at the time she was telling him the story of a music box that his mother had just given him. Little Archibaldo misunderstood that he had caused the nanny's death by using a music box, and has since longed to 'kill' again. As a grown man, he tells this story to his nun and threatens to kill her with a razor, but the nun manages to escape only to fall into an empty elevator shaft and die. During the police investigation, Archibaldo claims that he caused the death, as well as many others, but the inspector is not inclined to believe him. Next time Archibaldo wants a razor to end the life of a woman who is in constant conflict with her lover, but just as he was about to do so in her apartment, the lover returned. The next morning the police inspector informs him that the woman has committed suicide…

An adaptation of Rudolf Usigli’s novel, The Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz is a lucid black thriller-comedy with a frequent Buñuel motif of the inability to fulfill the protagonist’s wishes because they are always distracted by someone or something. The denial of the realization of desire is brought to a kind of climax here, because the protagonist wants to become no more and no less than a serial killer of women, but he does not succeed, but at least he is convinced that he caused the death of the person he wanted to kill. Obviously, this is a classic psychoanalytic connection between eros and thanatos, that is, radical sexual pathology with roots in childhood, performed, however, in an original and very witty way. Buñuel and Usiglio worked on the script together, but they broke up relatively quickly because the writer did not agree to a series of changes compared to the novel that the filmmaker wanted to make, so in the end Buñuel did it on his own. The film was shot during the great economic crisis of Mexican cinema after the previous 'golden age' and several times the production was on the verge of cancellation, so the famous scene of cremation of a tailor's doll was shot without any repetition because the team had only one doll available. Beyond the classic Buñuel canon, The Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz has gained cult status among devoted fans of obscure films, and since it is very rarely shown in our cinemas, it is one of the greatest treats of this cycle.

B / W, 89 ′

Portraits: Surrealist film by Luis Buñuel

As part of a major retrospective of Spanish director Luis Buñuel, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, by September 30, we will show 20 titles made in the period 1929-1977. Buñuel is an author of superb, original and recognizable opus and style, a director who perfectly surrealist symbolism fits into the overall structure of the work and permeates it with a plot, and a strong critic of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, especially the meaninglessness and futility of religious dogmas and human constraints.

The program was realized in cooperation with the Embassy of Spain in Zagreb and Cineteca Nacional México.

All films have Croatian subtitles.

Ticket price 20 kuna, for members 10 kuna.

Tickets can be purchased at the box office which opens one hour before the first screening of the day and closes after the start of the last screening of the day.

Ticket reservations are possible on weekdays (at least the day before the screening you want to book), by calling the box office or sending an email to: info@kinotuskanac.hr

Reserved tickets should be purchased no later than the day before the screening. Reservations that are not picked up the day before expire and the tickets are returned for sale.