When he was a child, Archibaldo believed he had killed his governess with the magic powers of a music box. As an adult, the mild-mannered gent still believes he can slay the women-in fact, he confesses to several murders he did not commit. The repeated frustration of his sadistic intentions provide the core of this outright comedy ("If we had to arrest everyone who thinks about murdering others, the jails would be overflowing," says the Chief of Police). A naive surrealist for whom fantasy and reality are one, Archibaldo suffers from the same pathology as his more diabolical counterpart Francisco in El. (Bu-uel saw novelist Rodolfo Usigli's hero Archibaldo as "a typical case of social parasitism," to the consternation of the author). But as critic Raymond Durgnat notes, "Where Francisco is devout, Archibaldo is an artist...His crimes are...his very conscious, aesthetic attempts to revive a delicious sensation."