One of Bunuel's most rare and amazing , ¨The Exterminating Angel¨ is packed with surreal moments , criticism , absurd situations and astonishing nightmares . This is one Buñuel's best , including characteristically scatological satire , fierce as well as surreal nightmares and surprising events . Dramatic film about strange relationships among various members of higher class when they remain locked into a mansion . As a luxurious mansion is the place wherein some dinner guests find they cannot for any definable reason leave the dining room .
This is weird story about a group of higher class , a drama with surrealism and sour portrait upon social stratum , catholicism , with plenty of dream imaginary and many other things , being stunningly realized by the Spanish maestro of surrealism , the great Luis Buñuel . This is a typical Buñuel film , as there are a lot of symbolism , social critique , including mockery or wholesale review upon religion , especially Catholicism . Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion , issues well shown in a lot of films and that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . Here Bunuel gives a perverse studio about wealthy people , desire and tension when a misfit bunch is closed for any inexplicable reason ; and even being strongly cut and banned by Russian censorship because the idea of people not being allowed to "leave a party" was considered offensive and anti-government . The scene where a bear and two sheep appear during the dinner party was based on a real incident at a dinner party that Buñuel once attended in New York . In his autobiography Luis Buñuel claims he was asked by Warner Brothers to work on a story that eventually was filmed as The beast with five fingers (1946) , it contains many of the elements of the earlier film including the large mansion, piano recital, and stabbing of a disembodied hand . Interesting and thought-provoking screenplay from the same Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza, Buñuel's usual screenwriter ; they pull off a straight-faced treatment of shocking subject matter .The movie script was original and early working title "The Castaways of Providence Street" , then Luis Buñuel took the title The Exterminating Angel from his friend José Bergamin, the Spanish poet, who had mentioned it the year before for a play he wanted to write . Out of all the films in Luis Buñuel's Mexican/Spanish film period, this is the only film he had complete creative control over . Nice acting by all-Mexican-star cast such as Claudio Brook , Jacqueline Andere , Enrique Rambal and Silvia Pinal of Viridiana , among others . The film relies heavily on the relationship between them , as are developed love-hatred conflicts . Furthermore , Buñuel satirizes and he carries out outright critical to aristocracy , bourgeoisie and attack upon religion . Atmospheric as well as evocative cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa , Buñuel's ordinary .
This thoughtful and dramatic motion picture was well produced by Gustavo Alatriste and compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his Mexican period ; in fact , it's plenty of known Mexican actors . Born in Calanda , Aragon (1900) , Buñuel subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War , where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨ , as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . He subsequently went on his Mexican period he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz" , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . After returning his native country, Spain, by making ¨Viridiana¨ this film was prohibited on the grounds of blasphemy as well as ¨The milky way¨ or Via Lactea , both of them were strongly prohibited by Spanish censorship . Most Buñuel's films were surreal black comedies , parables that satirized moral hypocrisy , social moral , artistic pretension, and , of course , the Catholic Church . In French-Spanish final period the collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière gave notorious as well as polemic films such as ¨Viridiana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and ¨Belle De Jour¨. His last one was the notorious ¨That obscure object of desire¨ (1977
