Ensayo de un Crimen
Luis Buñuel
When he was a child Archibald was given a music-box which he thought was bestowed with magical powers. One day his nanny is killed by a stray bullet. But for Archibald, who wanted her to die at that moment while he was listening to the music-box, he alone was the perpetrator of the crime. Archibald grows up and years later finds the box of his childhood, and with it the urge to murder. But all his criminal plans are soon to be thwarted...
With : Miroslava Stern, Ernesto Alonso, Rita Macedo, Ariadna Welter, Rodolfo Landa, Andrea Palma, José María Linares Rivas
Screenplay : Luis Buñuel, Eduardo Ugarte, d'après le roman éponyme de Rodolfo Usigli
Image : Agustín Jiménez
Sound : Rodolfo Benitez
Music : Jorge Pérez
Editing : Luis Buñuel, Jorge Bustos
Decors : Manuel L. Guevara
Screenplay : Luis Buñuel, Eduardo Ugarte, d'après le roman éponyme de Rodolfo Usigli
Image : Agustín Jiménez
Sound : Rodolfo Benitez
Music : Jorge Pérez
Editing : Luis Buñuel, Jorge Bustos
Decors : Manuel L. Guevara
Production : Alianza cinématográfica, Alfonso Patiño Gómez
Distribution: Les Films Sans Frontières
Distribution: Les Films Sans Frontières
The film is redolent with dark humour. Once again Buñuel shows characters eaten away with neuroses. But here, Archibald's evil is almost childish, amusing and disturbing at the same time. For many Ensayo de un criminen (Rehearsal for a Crime) is Buñuel's most surrealist film since l'Âge d'or (The Golden Age), but here the surrealism resides in the spirit more than in the form. "The uncoinscious has its own laws and systems of relationships. If you want to take it somewhere rationally, it rebels", said Buñuel about the character of Archibald. Here in the unconscious grows a strange osmosis between eroticism and art, that a music-box, just like Proust's madeleine, brings to the fore.