92

According to traditional readings, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) tells the story of a man who believes he is a murderer, when in fact he is merely entertaining criminal fantasies in which dreams and reality are confused. Hence the film is supposedly a kind of hymn to individual freedom. Like Sade, Archibaldo merely lives in an imaginary world where everything is possible, a world upon which no democracy can place its limits. I seek to reconsider this traditional interpretation, and to show that, far from celebrating the freedom to dream, Buñuel converts the frontier between dream and reality into a political problem. He explains to us that these frontiers, far from being natural, are constructed by the law. Moreover, he tries to show that they function through magical rather than rational processes. Thus he pursues a longstanding reflection on democratic justice initiated by Poe when he invented detective stories. I shall briefly show how, with this film, Buñuel joins a long critical tradition.