The Exterminating Angel [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel

Overview

The great screen surrealist Luis Buñuel co-wrote and directed this dark, bitterly witty satire. A group of people in formal dress arrives at an elegantly appointed home for a dinner party. However, once dinner is over and the guests retire to the drawing room, they discover that the servants have gone away, and for some reason they cannot leave. There is no explanation why -- there are no locked doors or barred windows preventing them from going home -- but the guests are convinced that they're stranded. Left to their own devices, they slowly but gradually degenerate into genteel savagery, taking an axe to a water pipe for drinking water, killing and eating a sheep that was to be part of the post-dinner entertainment, hiding the bodies of dead guests in the closet, dabbling in witchcraft, and burning the furniture. Buñuel's dry, quixotic wit is abundantly displayed in this film. Leading the cast was Silvia Pinal, the renowned actress who starred in several of Buñuel's Mexican films (she was married to noted producer Gustavo Alatriste, who produced several films with Buñuel). Other than the short subject Simon of the Desert, El Angel Exterminador proved to be Buñuel's last film made in his adopted homeland.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/08/2016
UPC:	0715515190312
Original Release:	1962
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:33:00
Sales rank:	1,663

Special Features

Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; The Last Script: Remembering Luis Bunuel, a 2008 documentary featuring Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere and Filmmaker Juan Luis Bunuel; Interviews with actor Silvia Pinal and Filmmaker Arturo Ripstein from 2006; Trailer; Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Marsha Kinder and an interview with Luis Bunuel from the 1970s

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jacqueline Andere	Alicia de Roc
Silvia Pinal	Leticia `La Valkiria'
Augusto Benedico	Carlos Conde; Doctor
Antonio Bravo	Sergio Russell
Ofelia Montesco	Beatriz
Nadia Haro Oliva	Ana Maynar
Javier Loya	Francisco Avila
Claudio Brook	Julián, Mayordomo
César del Campo	Álvaro, Colonel
Lucy Gallardo	Lucía de Nobile
Rosa Elena Durgel	Silvia
Enrique García Álvarez	Señor Roc
Patricia Morán	Rita Ugalde
Patricia de Morelos	Blanca
Bertha Moss	Leonora
Enrique Rambal	Edmundo Nobile
Tito Junco	Raúl
José Baviera	Leandro Gomez,Actor
Xavier Massé	Eduardo
Luis Beristáin	Christian
Ofelia Guilmáin	Juana Avila
Xavier Loyá	Francisco Avila
Pancho Córdova	Además
Ángel Merino	Lucas
Luis Lomelí	Actor
Elodia Hernández	Actor
Eric del Castillo	Actor
Janet Alcoriza	Actor
Arturo Cobo	Actor
Enrico Alvarez	Senor Roc
Tito Junco Sr.	Raul
Chel López	Actor
Raúl Lavista	Composer
Pietro Domenico Paradisi	Composer

Technical Credits

Luis Buñuel

Luis Alcoriza

Gustavo Alatriste	Producer
Luis Buñuel	Director,Screenwriter
Juan Munoz Ravelo	Special Effects
Luis Alcoriza	Screenwriter
José B. Carles	Sound Effects
Abraham Cruz	Sound Effects
James L. Fields	Sound Effects
Galdino R. Samperio	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

As a son of old money who later fell on hard times and embraced Marxism, Luis Buñuel had a well-earned contempt for the idle rich, and he rarely put it to better use than in El Angel Exterminador. While the opening titles, in which Buñuel coyly proclaims that the film has no literal meaning, seem a perverse challenge, one can watch the film at face value and practically hear the wicked old surrealist chuckling at the fate of his clueless upper-crust types, whose baffling inability to go home confounds all logic but their own. With the inexplicable going on all around them, their puzzlement may not be quite so difficult to understand -- What are the sheep and the bear doing there? What do the servants know that caused them all to leave? -- but the outside world seems to have fallen in line with the delusion: as family, friends, police, and casual onlookers keep watch over the mansion, no one has the courage to go inside. After all, these people have money and power, and if they think they can't come out, there must be some reason why. While the characters seem benignly absurd in the film's early stages, they seem at once dangerous, pathetic, and darkly hilarious as they devolve into animalistic barbarism. Buñuel did not have much use for pity, and he never expends a drop for his characters here. Packed with dark, offhand humor, casually bizarre images, twisted dream sequences (including one that seems to refer to Buñuel's alleged contributions to the B-horror opus The Beast With Five Fingers), and a simple but deceptively intelligent visual style, El Angel Extermindor is the sort of film that only Buñuel could have made; along with Los Olvidados, it's the finest of his Mexican films, and an ideal warm-up for the triumphs of his last period, especially Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie, with which it would make a superb double bill.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming