The Exterminating Angel

Director: Luis Buñuel

1962 / 95min / DCP

“In 1975 I attended a Buñuel double feature at the then-Elgin Cinema. I went to see Viridiana, but was dumbstruck by The Exterminating Angel, his last Mexican film, which I knew nothing about. I couldn’t stop thinking about the film’s exploration of inertia, extravagance, complacency, repetition, and mounting hysteria.” —Christopher Tellefsen, ACE

The dream of the never-ending party becomes nightmare in Buñuel’s smothering, surreal satire, in which well-heeled dinner guests congregating in the music room of a Mexican mansion at the end of an elegant evening find themselves suddenly, inexplicably, unable to leave, their shared veneer of sophistication rubbing off as the hours and days pass to reveal naked savagery lying beneath. “Though irrational, the film is not arbitrary. It translates into actuality the absurd reflections that proceed beneath polite intercourse and conscious thinking.” —Raymond Durgnat

Distributor: Janus Films

Introduction by editor Christopher Tellefsen, ACE on Sunday, December 14th/p>