The Exterminating Angel

by Karen Backstein

In The Last Script of Luis Buñuel, the fascinating documentary that Criterion happily includes as an extra on its welcome new DVD transfer of The Exterminating Angel (1962), Buñuel’s frequent collaborator, scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, refers to “the comedy of death” that suffuses Spanish culture. While Carrière was not specifically referring to The Exterminating Angel, his observation certainly captures that film’s anarchic spirit, with its unique blend of slapstick humor, tragedy, and violence.

Dinner begins

One of the most truly surrealistic works ever filmed—in some ways even more so than the Buñuel/Dali classic Un Chien Andalou—The Exterminating Angel is as powerful today as when it was shot, and as original. Originally titled The Castaways of Providence Street—the allusively named street on which the film takes place—it teases the audience, practically goading it to find an explanation for the extraordinary events that unfold over the course of its ninety-three minutes. But an explanation remains ever-elusive, as impossible to grasp as the disembodied hand that goes crawling across the floor of its own accord near the end of the film. We, as viewers, are almost in the same position as Buñuel’s protagonists, struggling to figure out the mystery of their predicament. There is no single, solid answer, however, only a multitude of possible interpretations.    

Though philosophically very different, the plot bears a passing resemblance to Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal existentialist play, Huis Clos (No Exit), written in 1944. There, three recently deceased characters find themselves confined together in one room, only to gradually realize that their destiny is to remain there forever, torturing each other throughout eternity. Buñuel himself underplayed the similarities, noting that Sartre’s protagonists understand the cause of their predicament and that in The Exterminating Angel, “there is absolutely no material circumstances that bar the people from leaving.” Certainly, however, Carrière—and Buñuel himself in an interview contained in the booklet accompanying the DVD—makes it clear that the director shared Sartre’s infamous sentiment that “l’enfer, c’est les autres gens” (hell is other people). To be trapped in a crowd was a horror to him; The Exterminating Angel carries that logic to its fullest extent as the circumstances in which the characters are caught become more and more dire.    

On the evening when the wealthy Nobile is planning to give an elaborate postopera dinner party for a group of aristocratic guests, the servants suddenly feel an irresistible urge to flee, “like rats deserting a sinking ship,” despite the fact that it may cost them their jobs. As anyone familiar with the Buñuel oeuvre knows, when the night begins with an upper-class feast, it’s more likely to end in chaos than goodwill and friendship. (See The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972, for a prime example.) And so it does here: following the meal, and after a nightcap and a brief piano recital by one of the guests, the unfathomable happens: for no discernible reason, no one can leave the drawing room. Up until then, there have been only brief hints of strangeness: the servants’ odd behavior; the fact that Nobile and his friends entered the house not once, but twice; and some bizarre stunts that took place during dinner, including a planned pratfall by the butler. (Another gag, featuring a series of animals, is cancelled before it happens, because one of the guests doesn’t appreciate jokes. We never know exactly what it was meant to be, but the beasts themselves figure importantly in the rest of the film. )    

At first, the situation is full of absurd humor, as one person after the other tries and fails to walk across the room’s threshold. But, as food and water disappear, the mood shifts to desperation, anguish, and rage: illness runs rampant, the once carefully-groomed bodies become powerfully unpleasant, and the basest aspects of human nature surface, mirroring the physical disintegration of the group. Buñuel’s surrealistic tendencies emerge ever more strongly as the characters’ feverish dreams and hallucinations take visible shape on screen. Even the so-called “real” activities they engage in, because of the context, seem absurd.    

The Exterminating Angel has a searing political edge that always colors—but does not overwhelm—even its most surrealistic scenes and images. Part of Buñuel’s body of work shot in Mexico, it explores the issue of class and nobility—with the latter word understood both in its literal, aristocratic sense and as a form of morality and grace under the most difficult of circumstances. For all the plot elements that seem similar to Sartre’s Huis Clos, for Buñuel, hell is not just other people but, more importantly, a social structure that destroys and deforms human relations. That’s why it makes an excellent companion to the very different Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones, 1950), about youth in a Mexico City slum. There, poverty makes human dignity difficult to maintain and violence runs rampant—exactly the sort of behavior that elicits a sneering reaction from the protagonists of Exterminating Angel, who feel that decorum is breached merely when a jacket is removed at a formal evening. What they undergo, however, breaks down (for the audience at least) that smug sense of superiority. (Early in the film one character blithely states that, “I think the lower classes are immune to pain.”)  

Under similar circumstances of want, the wealthy not only act no better than the poor, they act more shamefully. Suddenly, the satisfaction of primal needs—food, water, medicine, healthful surroundings—that they had always taken for granted becomes paramount for them, too. Secrets can no longer remain hidden under such close quarters, either (including an affair between two characters), and decency vanishes: when the group briefly finds a way to obtain some fresh water, everyone scurries for it like animals, with the stronger pushing the sick and weak brutally out of the way. It turns out there’s a small stash of illegal drugs in the house that Nobile likes to enjoy occasionally: while he wants to use it to relieve the pain of those who are ill, the most selfish and self-serving of his guests hope to steal it for their own pleasure. And when someone finds a missing pillbox with life-saving medication, he spitefully tosses it outside the room where no one can reach it. But beyond the physical, there is the emotional cruelty and growing mob rule, and the searing desire to find a scapegoat to blame for their wretched situation. Nobile, the host and a man who merits his gracious name, becomes that person in what almost—but, being from Buñuel, not quite—turns into a Christian allegory of crucifixion. In fact, even the faith some try to maintain is ripped apart, as Buñuel reveals the useless of the many icons the characters cling to: plastic virgins, keys from Kabbalah, Masonic symbols.

As panic and hunger set in, the wealthy guests become no better than a herd of starving animals 

The interview with Buñuel in the accompanying booklet makes clear that he does not wish the film’s meaning reduced to a single, simple interpretation and that he rejects any explanation that focuses on politics alone (though he acknowledges the searing critique of the bourgeoisie). In his view, the psychological and the physiological always make their own demands, and while people of different classes would react differently, few would fully retain their humanity under the type of circumstances dramatized in The Exterminating Angel. And while this is a film filled with black comedy, it is not one with much hope, as—to use the title of another Buñuel masterpiece—liberty proves to be an elusive phantom only briefly grasped.

The DVD offers a sparkling new transfer that really shows off Gabriel FIgueroa’s gorgeous cinematography. While the unique narrative can grab a spectator’s attention almost to the complete exclusion of any other facet of the film, The Exterminating Angel is a beautifully shot work, with memorable images that brilliantly capture the variety of shifting moods. Given the limited physical space in which Figueroa filmed for much of the time—a single room, with brief cuts to outside the mansion or to what the characters can see of the rest of the house—as well as the stylistic mix of gritty realism with surrealistic dreams, the structure certainly offered him a remarkable challenge. The subtitles, in outlined black-and-white, are very legible, as well, and the sound mix excellent.

Finally, all social graces dissolve

Buñuel fans will appreciate the extras here. They include the full-length documentary The Last Script, made in 2008, which follows Carrière and Buñuel’s son Juan Luis across continents as they share memories and visit the many countries where Luis Buñuel lived and worked. They cover his childhood and education; step into the studios where he filmed; discuss his relationship with such figures as Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca; show old photographs (including a delicious one of Buñuel dressed as a nun) and deal with the prevailing influence of Spanish culture on his films. In addition, there are two short filmed interviews with Sylvia Pinal, whose husband financed The Exterminating Angel and allowed Buñuel to enjoy total freedom in his filmmaking, and one with Mexican director Arturo Ripstein (shot in 2006), in which he speaks about Buñuel’s lasting influence on the Mexican film industry. Marcia Kinder provides an excellent essay in the booklet, which also includes an immensely enjoyable and enlightening interview of Luis Buñuel by film critics Tomás Pérez Turrant and José de la Collina (excerpted from Objects of Desire: Conversations with Luis Buñuel).

Karen Backstein has a Ph.D. from New York University's Department of Cinema Studies and has taught at several New York Area colleges.

Cineaste,Vol.XXXIV No.4 2009

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