The Exterminating Angel

Star Review

Buñuel relishes the tension, anger and inherent humour in the frustration of not being able to satisfy a simple desire, and it has rarely been so acutely realised than in The Exterminating Angel. The story itself is ingeniously simple. A group of bourgeois friends arrive for a dinner party only to find that at the end of the evening they cannot leave. They are not held prisoner, nor forced to do anything against their will; they just cannot leave. As frustration sets in, and in the absence of any food or drink, they take to eating paper and drinking from broken water pipes while Buñuel, ever the merciless critic of bourgeois etiquette and convention, imbues his film with a variety of surrealist touches. Essential, masterly mid-period Buñuel.

Graeme Hobbs on 11th August 2006

View all 230 of Graeme Hobbs’s reviews

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Film Description

Through a classic surrealist conceit, an elegant gathering of high society folk find that they are unable to leave the dinner party they are attending. Their impeccable bourgeois manners turn bestial as the servants disappear and the days pass. With savage wit and unfailing precision, Bunuel shows the skill of a master film maker who has reached the peak of his maturity. As wicked now as the day it was banned. "Ninety hypnotic minutes" The Guardian.

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Film Details

Cast

Jacqueline Andere, Silvia Pinal

Technical Details