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.
