# Ensayo de un Crimen
**Ensayo de un crimen** (Spanish for "Rehearsal for a Crime") is a 1944 novel by the Mexican writer Rodolfo Usigli and a 1955 film adaptation directed by [Luis Buñuel](https://www.edgepedia.org/luis-bunuel), released under the title *La vida criminal de Archibaldo de la Cruz* (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz). Both works center on a wealthy man who believes himself fated to commit the perfect murder, and both are set in post-revolutionary Mexico City. The novel is regarded as a founding work of Mexican crime fiction, and the film as one of Buñuel's most personal Mexican pictures, marked by dark humor and his recurring theme of the impossible desire.
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Novel | *Ensayo de un crimen*, by Rodolfo Usigli (1905–1979), first published by Editorial América, Mexico, 1944[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327) • [2](https://search.worldcat.org/title/1343048) |
| Film | Directed by Luis Buñuel (1900–1983), Mexico, 1955, 89 minutes, Spanish language, produced by Alianza Cinematográfica[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz) |
| Screenplay | Luis Buñuel and Eduardo Ugarte, credited as "inspired by" Usigli's novel rather than as a direct transcription[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz) • [4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html) |
| Main cast | Ernesto Alonso (Archibaldo de la Cruz), Miroslava (Lavinia), Rita Macedo (Patricia Terrazas), Ariadna Welter (Carlota), Andrea Palma (señora Cervantes)[5](https://www.cinetecanacional.net/micrositios/muestra71/documentos/programa_mano.pdf) |
| Literary standing | Considered the germ of the Mexican crime novel; Ilan Stavans called it "the best police novel written in Mexico"[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327) • [6](https://www.proquest.com/docview/748683003?OpenUrlRefId=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo&accounti=) |
| Film recognition | Ranked #35 in Cahiers du Cinéma's Annual Top 10 Lists and #82 in François Truffaut's *The Films in My Life*[7](https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/1727-ensayo%2Bde%2Bun%2Bcrimen/) |
| Restoration | Restored by Cineteca Nacional México and screened in the Venice Classics section of the 2019 Venice Film Festival[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz) |
## Spoilers
### Plot of the film
Archibaldo de la Cruz, a wealthy bachelor, has been obsessed with death since childhood. As a boy during the [Mexican Revolution](https://www.edgepedia.org/mexican-revolution), his parents gave him a musical box that his governess said could kill any enemy who heard its melody; when the curious child opened it, a stray bullet killed the young woman, and he took himself for her murderer[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz). As an adult, the violent deaths of several women close to him, women whose deaths he had desired, convince him that he is a killer, and he tells his life story to a judge, mixing reality and imagination[5](https://www.cinetecanacional.net/micrositios/muestra71/documentos/programa_mano.pdf). His only argument is that he wished for all these deaths[11](https://www.filmin.es/pelicula/ensayo-de-un-crimen). In fact chance always frustrates his attempts, and he never kills anyone[5](https://www.cinetecanacional.net/micrositios/muestra71/documentos/programa_mano.pdf).
Buñuel described the film as "a joke, a divertimento", a dark comedy about visual and auditory obsessions, childhood memories, death linked to eroticism and guilt[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz). In interviews collected by José de la Colina and Tomás Pérez Turrent, he said of his antihero: "Archibaldo wants to kill... He seeks to kill a woman and fails. Tries to kill another and fails again. One could say he wanted to fail, so as to try once more"[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz).
## The novel
Usigli, a dramatist, narrator, and essayist best known for the play *El gesticulador* (published the same year, 1944), wrote *Ensayo de un crimen* as his only novel[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327) • [4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html). Its protagonist is Roberto de la Cruz, a single man of comfortable means devoted to gambling and governed by aesthetic preoccupations that drive his desire to commit the perfect murder; the Mexico City of the 1940s supplies his stage[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327).
The book departed from the themes that had prevailed in Mexican narrative up to that point, showing the decomposition of sectors of the capital's bourgeoisie and marking the start of a vision of post-revolutionary Mexico. After an initially adverse critical reception, it came to be considered one of the most important Mexican novels of the twentieth century[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327).
**Genre position.** The novel inherits a tradition running from [Edgar Allan Poe](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgar-allan-poe), Thomas de Quincey, J. K. Huysmans, and Bernardo Couto Castillo, and shares material with contemporary hard-boiled fiction such as [Dashiell Hammett](https://www.edgepedia.org/dashiell-hammett)'s *The Maltese Falcon* (1930), James M. Cain's *The Postman Always Rings Twice* (1934), and [Raymond Chandler](https://www.edgepedia.org/raymond-chandler)'s *The Lady in the Lake* (1943)[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327). Critics place it at the origin of Mexican crime fiction: José Luis de la Fuente calls it the first Mexican crime novel and possibly one of the earliest in Latin America, and the scholar Ilan Stavans, in his doctoral thesis, called it "the best police novel written in Mexico"[6](https://www.proquest.com/docview/748683003?OpenUrlRefId=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo&accounti=). A later thesis notes that it may have been preceded by Antonio Helú's "La obligación de asesinar", though that work is arguably a short story rather than a novel[8](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/pmig2018/0067999/0067999.pdf).
A formal innovation noted by critics is the shift of narrative viewpoint from the detective to the criminal, against the convention of the classical detective story, in which the reader was denied access to the criminal's thoughts and motives[8](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/pmig2018/0067999/0067999.pdf).
## The film adaptation
**Origins of the project.** Around 1951 Buñuel and Usigli spent several weeks working together on the screenplay, one of three projects on which they collaborated that year, alongside *Susana* and *Una mujer sin amor*[4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html). The initiative came from the actor Ernesto Alonso, a former student of Usigli, who bought the rights to the novel intending to star opposite his friend Miroslava Stern under Buñuel's direction. Buñuel recalled that what interested him in the book was "the obsession, the frustrated vocation of the murderer"[4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html).
**The break with Usigli.** The collaboration of two intransigent creators did not last. Buñuel said he abandoned the joint adaptation after about fifteen days "because Usigli did not permit the slightest variation of his text"[4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html). Buñuel continued on his own with the Spanish writer Eduardo Ugarte and released the film without Usigli's consent. Usigli complained before the film writers' union, arguing that his rights had been trampled and that he had been promised approval over changes; the two men insulted each other publicly at a union assembly[4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html) • [9](https://www.jornada.com.mx/1998/03/15/sem-serna.html). Buñuel was absolved because his credits read "inspired by...", signaling not a transcription of the book but a different work developing certain elements in his own way[4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html). In France the film circulated as *La vie criminelle d'Archibald de la Cruz*[10](https://www.filmoteca.cat/web/ca/dossier-film/ensayo-de-un-crimen).
Buñuel explained that the novel's *roman à clef* side, its portrait of a specific Mexican milieu, did not interest him, since he did not know that world and doubted the spectator would care; his film kept the character's obsession instead[4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html). With time the rift healed: in a 1972 conference in Brussels on *Imagen y prisma de México*, Usigli named Buñuel, alongside Emilio "El Indio" Fernández, as a director of great quality above the other filmmakers of Mexican cinema[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327) • [4](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html).
## Style and themes
The film sits between film noir and black comedy, with a psychoanalytic plot and melodrama beneath, and it deconstructs the conventions of the Mexican commercial cinema it appears to follow[10](https://www.filmoteca.cat/web/ca/dossier-film/ensayo-de-un-crimen). Critics read Archibaldo's compulsion through Oedipal frustration and hostility displaced onto the women he pursues, whom he tries and fails to kill; the film keeps Buñuel's characteristic comic tone throughout[10](https://www.filmoteca.cat/web/ca/dossier-film/ensayo-de-un-crimen). The musical box functions as the emblem of an unresolved childhood desire, in this case the desire to murder[12](https://www.sensacine.com/peliculas/pelicula-29698/criticas-espectadores/). The theme of the impossible desire, one of Buñuel's favorites, runs through the picture, which examines the structures and values framing the femicidal desire of its presumed criminal[5](https://www.cinetecanacional.net/micrositios/muestra71/documentos/programa_mano.pdf).
Some critics have called it Buñuel's most surrealist film since *[L'Âge d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/lage-dor)*, with the surrealism residing in the spirit rather than the form[13](https://www.premiersplans.org/en/film/ensayo-de-un-crimen). A study of the adaptation notes that Buñuel's film omits concrete references to pre-revolutionary Mexican history, geography, and culture on its surface, yet it does not place him wholly outside Mexican cultural contexts[14](https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/capitulos/9783954878543_014.pdf).
## Reception and legacy
The film is considered one of the most original and atypical of Mexican cinema for its marked black humor[1](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327), and one of Buñuel's best Mexican films[11](https://www.filmin.es/pelicula/ensayo-de-un-crimen). It appears in several canonical lists: #35 in [Cahiers du Cinéma](https://www.edgepedia.org/cahiers-du-cinema)'s annual top-ten lists, #56 in Sector Cine's Best Mexican Films of All Time, #79 in *Cien años sin soledad: Greatest Latin American Films*, #82 in Truffaut's *The Films in My Life*, and #932 in the TSPDT 1,000 Greatest Films[7](https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/1727-ensayo%2Bde%2Bun%2Bcrimen/). On iCheckMovies it holds a user rating of 7.9 from 3,816 votes[7](https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/1727-ensayo%2Bde%2Bun%2Bcrimen/).
The critic José de la Colina wrote in 1971 that the film, though a minor work in Buñuel's output, was more alive than the book[9](https://www.jornada.com.mx/1998/03/15/sem-serna.html). Scholarship on adaptation argues conversely that Buñuel's film contributed to the artistic prestige of the literary source[15](https://portalcientifico.uah.es/documentos/615fbe2db6cb9e7b65620465?lang=es). Its afterlife in cinema includes [Pedro Almodóvar](https://www.edgepedia.org/pedro-almodovar)'s *Carne trémula* (1997), described as the most notable film homage to *Ensayo de un crimen* to date[14](https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/capitulos/9783954878543_014.pdf). A restoration by Cineteca Nacional México was presented in the Venice Classics section of the 2019 Venice International Film Festival[3](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz).
## References
1. [Ensayo de un crimen, obra detail, Enciclopedia de la Literatura en México (ELM)](https://www.elem.mx/obra/datos/4327)
2. [Ensayo de un crimen; novela, WorldCat](https://search.worldcat.org/title/1343048)
3. [Ensayo de un crimen (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz), Biennale Cinema 2019, Venice Classics](https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-classics/ensayo-de-un-crimen-criminal-life-archibaldo-de-la-cruz)
4. [Gustavo Pérez Rodríguez, "Ensayo de un crimen. Buñuel-Usigli: la eterna discrepancia entre escritor y director", Imágenes, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM](https://www.esteticas.unam.mx/revista_imagenes/dearchivos/dearch_perez01.html)
5. [Ensayo de un crimen, program note, Cineteca Nacional México](https://www.cinetecanacional.net/micrositios/muestra71/documentos/programa_mano.pdf)
6. [Los dos Ensayo(s) de un crimen: Buñuel y Usigli, Chasqui (ProQuest)](https://www.proquest.com/docview/748683003?OpenUrlRefId=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo&accounti=)
7. [Ensayo de un crimen (1955), iCheckMovies](https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/1727-ensayo%2Bde%2Bun%2Bcrimen/)
8. ["Ensayo de un crimen: la primer novela policial", UNAM thesis](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/pmig2018/0067999/0067999.pdf)
9. [La Jornada, 15 March 1998, column on Buñuel and Usigli](https://www.jornada.com.mx/1998/03/15/sem-serna.html)
10. [Ensayo de un crimen, Dossier Film, Filmoteca de Catalunya](https://www.filmoteca.cat/web/ca/dossier-film/ensayo-de-un-crimen)
11. [Ensayo de un crimen, Filmin](https://www.filmin.es/pelicula/ensayo-de-un-crimen)
12. [Ensayo de un crimen (La vida criminal de Archibaldo de la Cruz), SensaCine audience reviews](https://www.sensacine.com/peliculas/pelicula-29698/criticas-espectadores/)
13. [Ensayo de un Crimen, Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers](https://www.premiersplans.org/en/film/ensayo-de-un-crimen)
14. [Chapter on Luis Buñuel's Ensayo de un crimen (1955), Iberoamericana Vervuert](https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/capitulos/9783954878543_014.pdf)
15. [Paul Patrick Quinn, "Ensayo de un crimen. De la página a la pantalla", Fotocinema, no. 14, 2017](https://portalcientifico.uah.es/documentos/615fbe2db6cb9e7b65620465?lang=es)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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