Luis Buñuel

The Exterminating Angel

The Exterminating Angel

A group of high-society friends are invited to a mansion for dinner and find themselves inexplicably unable to leave, in Luis Buñuel’s daring masterpiece The Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador). Made just one year after the director’s inter­na­tional sensation Viridiana, this film, full of eerie comic absurdity, continues Buñuel’s wicked takedown of the rituals and dependencies of the frivolous upper classes.

Share

Film Info

  • Mexico
  • 1962
  • 93 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Spanish
  • Spine #459

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • The Last Script: Remembering Luis Buñuel, a 2008 documentary featuring screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and filmmaker Juan Luis Buñuel
  • Interviews with actor Silvia Pinal and filmmaker Arturo Ripstein from 2006
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Marsha Kinder and an interview with Luis Buñuel from the 1970s

    Cover by Neil Kellerhouse

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • The Last Script: Remembering Luis Buñuel, a 2008 documentary featuring screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and filmmaker Juan Luis Buñuel
  • Interviews with actor Silvia Pinal and filmmaker Arturo Ripstein from 2006
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Marsha Kinder and an interview with Luis Buñuel from the 1970s

    Cover by Neil Kellerhouse
The Exterminating Angel
Cast
Silvia Pinal
Leticia “The Valkyrie”
Jacqueline Andere
Alicia de Roc
José Baviera
Leandro Gomez
Augusto Benedico
Carlos Conde, the doctor
Luis Beristáin
Cristián Ugalde
Antonio Bravo
Sergio Russell
Claudio Brook
Julio, the steward
César del Campo
Alvaro, the colonel
Rosa Elena Durgel
Silvia
Lucy Gallardo
Lucía de Nobile
Enrique García Alvarez
Alberto Roc
Ofelia Guilmáin
Juana Avila
Nadia Haro Oliva
Ana Maynar
Tito Junco
Raúl
Xavier Loyá
Francisco Avila
Xavier Massé
Eduardo
Ofelia Montesco
Beatriz
Patricia Morán
Rita Ugalde
Patricia de Morelos
Bianca
Bertha Moss
Leonora
Enrique Rambal
Edmundo Nobile
Credits
Director
Luis Buñuel
Writer
Luis Buñuel
Based on a story by
Luis Alcoriza
Based on a story by
Luis Buñuel
Producer
Gustavo Alatriste
Cinematographer
Gabriel Figueroa
Sound engineer
José B. Carles
Production design
Jesús Bracho
Composer
Raúl Lavista
Editor
Carlos Savage
Costume design
Georgette Somohano

Related Films

1/3
2/3
3/3

Current

Silvia Pinal on The Exterminating Angel
Silvia Pinal on The Exterminating Angel
A biting satire of bourgeois frivolity, the 1962 surrealist masterpiece The Exterminating Angel is one of Spanish auteur Luis Buñuel’s most macabre creations. In this follow-up to the scandalous, Palme d’Or–winning Viridiana, Silvia Pinal and …
Sneak Peeks — Dec 5, 2016
The Exterminating Angel: Exterminating Civilization
The Exterminating Angel: Exterminating Civilization
Luis Buñuel’s ferociously brilliant The Exterminating Angel (1962) is one of his most provocative and unforgettable works. In it, we watch a trivial breach of etiquette transform into the destruction of civilization. Not only does this story under…

By Marsha Kinder

Essays — Feb 9, 2009
Azazel Jacobs’s Top 10
Azazel Jacobs’s Top 10

The director shares some of the films that have helped guide his creative process and inspired his approach to his latest movie, French Exit.

— Mar 8, 2021
Luis Buñuel: Eternal Surrealist
Luis Buñuel: Eternal Surrealist

With a mixture of intuition, craft, and an endless curiosity about how cinema can be used to shock and provoke, the Spanish master left us with a rich body of work that stands as a testament to the power of surrealism.

By Adrian Martin

Features — Jan 10, 2020
Dennis Lim’s Top 10
Dennis Lim’s Top 10

In the spirit of a double-feature series at Film at Lincoln Center currently underway, the venerable institution’s director of programming has put together ten pairings that highlight thematic and stylistic parallels throughout our collection.

— Jul 25, 2019
The Wealthy Gone Wild in Indiana

Repertory Picks

The Wealthy Gone Wild in Indiana

Luis Buñuel skewers high society in his audaciously experimental late-career satire The Exterminating Angel, playing at the Indiana University Cinema this week.

In Theaters — Jan 10, 2019
Alice Rohrwacher’s Top 10
Alice Rohrwacher’s Top 10

The Cannes-prize-winning director of The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro shares the films that inspire her, including works that allow her to “participate in true genius.”

— Dec 3, 2018

Explore

Luis Buñuel

Writer, Director

Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel

As made clear in his seminal works Viridiana and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—delirious screeds against, respectively, religion and social conformity—Luis Buñuel was one of cinema’s great subversives and mischief makers. He began his career as a member of the French surrealists—his first films, Un chien andalou and L’âge d’or, absurd and violently sexual scandals that met with censorship, were collaborations with Salvador Dalí. After years of working alternately in his native Spain (where the scintillating, shaming faux documentary Land Without Bread and, later, Viridiana were both banned), the United States, and Mexico, Buñuel made most of his late films in France, combining surrealist non sequiturs with attacks on the bourgeoisie, the church, and social hypocrisy in general in such masterpieces as The Milky Way, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire.

More Luis Buñuel View All