The Exterminating Angel
Screening: 22 October 2002
Ritchie Room - members only
Mexico 1962 (subtitles)
95 minutes
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Leading players - Jacqueline Andere, Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal.
Synopsis
Gaiety, humour, surrealism exist side-by-side in this revelation of a dinner party after the opera. The guests seem compelled to find excuses to avoid being first to leave, whereas the servants seem only too keen to leave at any cost. The usual rituals grow more exaggerated as the hours, then days pass. Two fiancés pretend to have met for the first time, a pianist embraces her doctor passionately, a pregnant woman hints to her unmoved husband that she has doubts about the paternity of her child.* * * * * *
Buñuel (1900 - 1983) made his first film (Un chien andalou) in Paris in 1928, and his last (Cet obscur objet du désir) in France and Spain in 1977. El angel exterminador came in 1962 during a brief return to Mexico. But they are all universal and modern, with a sense of paradox and the surreal that tends to engage the audience rather than to alienate it. Perhaps this was because Buñuel never the lost the perspective of one who knew the things he looked at from the inside: brought up in comfortable circumstances and educated a Roman Catholic, his view of the bourgeoisie and of the Church was an intimate one. He is often quoted as saying “Thank God I am still an atheist!”.His early exposure to surrealism and absurdism perfectly equipped him to express what he saw in what became a unique style. He remained one of the more humane directors, provoking sympathy for his characters rather than contempt.
