That of course is where Jesus supposedly said "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That is to say, thinking about doing a thing is as bad as doing it. That precept never made much sense to yours truly, and apparently it didn't to Luis Bunuel either, because the whole point of this movie seems to be to refute that notion. The title character fantasizes about killing various women he comes across, but circumstances always seem to conspire to prevent it. At the end when he demands to be arrested, an authority figure replies, in effect, "For what? You didn't do anything." The best part of the film is the opening sequence apparently taking place around the end of the Mexican revolution period c. 1920, with Archibaldo as an insufferably spoiled only child giving grief to his long-suffering but stoic nanny. Filmed in Bunuel's trademark style with long takes and barely perceptible camera movements, this battle of wills is fascinating until the arrival of the lad's rich idiot mother (rich idiots being one of Bunuel's favorite lifelong targets). Meanwhile the nanny watches through the window as a gun battle unfolds in the street below; she catches a stray bullet, and young Archibaldo finds himself fascinated with her corpse. Cut forward to the adult Archibaldo, now a rich idiot in his own right plus an obsession with being a serial killer. This main part of the film was less interesting for me, mostly because Bunuel allows the adult actor to perform almost like a cartoon, with bulging eyes and goofy leer, like a mentally retarded Snidely Whiplash. The supporting cast are competent performers but in my memory I have trouble telling some of them apart. There are some nice fantasy sequences, such as Archibaldo ordering his bride to undergo an elaborate Catholic ritual before shooting her. Probably the best known sequence, Archibaldo cremating a mannequin, left me more or less unmoved, although it probably seemed more sensational in 1955. Part of the problem here is that, as in the later "American Psycho," how compelling is it if all the bad stuff takes place inside the guy's head? Also there's a lack of that great sexual tension that Bunuel was able to generate in some of his other Mexican work, such as "Susana" or "El Bruto." But certainly it's a must see at least for Bunuel fans; like Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" from the same year, this is the closest this director comes to true whimsy (especially the parts with the American tourists) in a career of mostly much darker shades.

Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, The (1955) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Luis Bunuel film that sounds more interesting than it turns out to be. As a young child, Archibaldo is told of a magical magic box that when turned on will kill. As an adult, Archibaldo comes across this box again and this times plans to use it to help him become a serial killer. There's a lot of black humor scattered throughout the film but very little of it made me laugh. The opening segments bashing the rich were funny but the film slowly falls apart in the middle and never regains any speed. The story is a very good one but the director does very little with it, which is a shame because this should have been a whole lot better.

I don't understand why some reviewers call "Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz" (1955) - "minor" Bunuel. The only "minor" about this (and many his films) is its running time, only 89 minutes but all his films are enigmatic, odd, charming, and always brilliant. I consider Bunuel one of the best and original filmmakers ever and nothing he had done is minor for me."Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz is B/W comedy of Don Luis' Mexican period which is surreal, disturbing, erotic and funny satire about a perverted young wealthy man, an amateur sculptor. Since he was a boy, and one evening witnessed the sudden death of his young attractive governess and became sexually exited by it, Archibaldo De La Cruz dreams of committing a perfect crime of an attractive woman to recreate the feeling but something always prevents him from fulfilling his dreams. It does not mean that the deaths would not occur -it is just that Archibaldo can't take a credit for them. As he often did with his even unlikable and perverse characters, Bunuel gives some of his own sexual fantasies, fetishes, and dreams that he freely admits to Archibaldo thus making him more human and sympathetic.

"Ensayo de un Crimen" describes a man that after a childhood experience intimately connected with a music box revels in murder dreams - sex, pleasure and murder being intimately linked: In the time of the Mexican revolution his baby-sitter was killed by a stray bullet in front of him. As she is lying there dead and defenseless, blood running down her throat, going down her thighs, the boy feels deep pleasure and power. All this is punctuated by the sound of a musical box. In the chaos of the times the musical box disappears and these feelings are buried and forgotten. One day, Archibaldo de la Cruz, already a grown man, finds that musical box in a shop and, barely concealing his excitement, buys it and his old dreams come to the surface again.In the beginning of the film (after a mysterious accident suffered by a nun), he goes to the police station in order to confess a murder and tells the story of his life to the police chief. His life is shown in flashbacks and shows the life he led and the women he met. From now on it is difficult to tell reality from dreams.Buñuel is a very good actor's director and aptly describes the straight-jacket morality of the time where official marriage is mandatory (for women this is like a prison where the warder is her husband), and the icons of the catholic church are a dominant presence. Here are the essential elements present in the films of Buñuel. Fantasy/ Reality, double-standard morality and the church - the only road to freedom seems surrealism, fantasy overtaking reality.Buñuel's films are sensuous and full of atmosphere and here as usual reality is not what it seems. Even if he, in his early Mexican films, seems to make concessions to the producers, you will notice under the surface all the themes that obsessed Buñuel and that would come to the foreground in films like "Viridiana", "El Angel Exterminador", "Belle de Jour" etc..