Classic Film Night – The Exterminating Angel 1962

Surreal and macabre, The Exterminating Angel is a masterpiece of satire from iconoclastic director Luis Buñuel that is on the New York Time’s Guide to the Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. In Buñuel’s own words, it is “the story of a group of friends who have dinner together after seeing a play, but when they go into the living room after dinner, they find that for some inexplicable reason they can’t leave.” Over the next few days, the conventions of polite society begin to crumble, then all pretense to civilisation collapses as the formerly refined guests are reduced to living like animals.

The film will be introduced and given context by Peter Rainey, an SMSA member and cinema enthusiast, who returns to an earlier passion for films as a Program Director for a Queensland Cinema Group, now that he has retired after 40 years in the education profession.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)
El Ángel Exterminador
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Screenplay by Luis Buñuel
Starring Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal
Cinematography Gabriel Figueroa
Edited by Carlos Savage
93 minutes | Spanish with English subtitles