Dir/Wri| Luis Bunuel | Drama 1962
One of the final films of Bunuel’s Mexican phase before the old boy mellowed beyond all recognition from the angry young firebrand whose passionate indignation at social inequality had positively seethed in ‘Las Hurdes’ and ‘Los Olvidados’; and had rightly earned him the reputation of being one of the cinema’s great iconoclasts.
Although ‘Los Olvidados’ contains an extraordinary dream sequence, Bunuel had regretted that during the fifties he had been “absolutely forbidden” to introduce elements of fantasy into his films. By 1961, however, he had acquired a young well-heeled new producer, so that despite its apparent obscurity ‘The Exterminating Angel’ manages to provides a vivid summary of Bunuel’s ideas on society and social convention in which he gleefully watches society – placed under certain test conditions – breaking down so that these cultivated people become before long no better that the superstitious peasants that Bunuel suggests they have always been.
The confusion of the critics when the film finally appeared wasn’t helped by the reply by Bunuel’s son when asked why a bear was occasionally seen wandering among the party guests “Because my father likes bears”; or his claim that the frequent repetition of shots were because the film was simply too short and needed lengthening. @RichardChatten