[The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz] is in many respects a very remarkable film. It is a comédie noire in which the director may have taken himself more seriously than he originally intended. Like all Bunuel's films, it maintains an identity of atmosphere from beginning to end, and in its crucial moments produces the horror which lies behind the farces of life and human behaviour. Viewed in relation to the canon of his work, this film confirms a growing belief that the so-called iconoclasms of L'Age d'Or, and the apparently deliberate shock-tactics in many of his films, represent in fact a quite simple outlook on life—the philosophy, in fact, of Luis Bunuel. (p. 87)

I would suspect—no, I believe—that Bunuel is a very simple man who expresses himself according to his beliefs about human beings and their behaviour. He would not accept Gide's...