The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz

Luis Buñuel, in peak perverse form, indulges his fondness for foot fetishism and amour fou, among other obsessions, in this wicked, witty black comedy dating from the great surrealist master’s prolific Mexican period. As a child, wealthy landowner Archibaldo de la Cruz believed that he had killed his governess with the magic powers of his music box; she had found him dressing in his mother’s clothes and, while scolding him, had suddenly dropped dead. Years later, as an adult, Archibaldo rediscovers the music box, awakening his murderous, erotic memories of the nanny’s death. He then resolves to commit a series of sex slayings — but chance and coincidence keep intervening to dispatch his intended victims before he does. “Buñuel obviously enjoyed relaxing with the black comedy of this ‘entertainment.’ . . . The most famous sequence in the film has [Archibaldo] dragging a wax effigy to the furnace and watching orgasmically as it writhes in the heat” (Georges Sadoul). “An acrid study of the masculine ego in murderous crisis . . . There are shades of Hitchcock in this lean but dense thriller” (Jessica Winter, The Rough Guide to Film). B&W, 16mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 89 mins.