The Exterminating Angel [El Angel Exterminador] **** (1962, Silvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, Enrique Rambal) – Classic Movie Review 4883

Co-writer/ director Luis Buñuel starts his glittering series of onslaughts on the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie with this tantalising 1962 Surrealist black comedy.

There is perhaps a little too much obvious calculation in the allegory of a society dinner party where the guests are unable to go home. However, that is compensated for by Buñuel’s Surrealistic flourishes and the touches of idiosyncratic strangeness (the introduction of the bear and flock of sheep) in the realisation, showing why he is known as ‘The Father of Cinematic Surrealism’.

In the screenplay by Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza, after several days of being unable to go home, the guests’ polite middle-class façades finally collapse and the guests’ normally well-hidden real bestial qualities are exposed, just living like animals.

The Exterminating Angel is an idiosyncratic personal work that could perhaps only have been made by Buñuel, and it is one of his masterworks, though the best form him was yet to come.

It stars Silvia Pinal from Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961), Enrique Rambal, Jacqueline Andere, Claudio Brook, Augusto Benedico, César del Campo, José Baviera, Lucy Gallardo, Enrique García Álvarez, Ofelia Guilmáin, and Rosa Elena Durgel.

The film points the way to Buñuel’s masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4883

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