---
title: "The Exterminating Angel"
year: 1962
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-exterminating-angel"
fi1m_id: "the-exterminating-angel"
imdb_id: "tt0056732"
tmdb_id: 29264
wikidata_id: "Q332427"
fi1m_score: 87
critics_score: 80
critics_reviews: 11
published: "2026-09-26T14:41:44.206832+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-26T14:41:52.503991+00:00"
region: "HU"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Directed by Luis Buñuel · 1h 33m · Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

## Identity

The Exterminating Angel

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-exterminating-angel
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-exterminating-angel
- **IMDb ID:** tt0056732
- **TMDB ID:** 29264
- **Wikidata ID:** Q332427
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056732/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/29264, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q332427

**Fi1m score: 87** · Critics 80 from 11 reviews

*In a sentence:* A dinner party no one can leave, and the sheep turn out to have better manners than the guests

> Luis Buñuel locks the rich in a drawing room and watches what they turn into. It is still funny, still cruel and still impossible to explain, which is the point, and Gabriel Figueroa’s black and white gives the joke a cold, level stare.

## Synopsis

Mexico City, the early 1960s. Edmundo Nóbile (Enrique Rambal) and his wife Lucía (Lucy Gallardo) bring a party of wealthy friends home from the opera for a late supper. Before the guests have climbed the stairs the servants are leaving, with excuses nobody believes; only the butler, Julio (Claudio Brook), stays. In the kitchen a bear and a flock of lambs wait for a joke that will not be played. Among the guests are Leticia ‘La Valkiria’ (Silvia Pinal), the one unmarried woman, Dr. Carlos Conde (Augusto Benedico) and Alicia Roc (Jacqueline Andere). After dinner they move to the drawing room for a piano recital, sit, talk, and do not go home. Morning comes, and they are still there.

## Review

Luis Buñuel’s premise fits in one sentence. A party of wealthy guests, home from the opera, sit down to a late supper in the Nóbile mansion, move through to the drawing room for a piano recital, and then find that none of them can leave. Nothing bars the door. They simply do not go, and the next morning they are still there, in evening dress, on the sofas and the floor. It is the best joke Buñuel ever told, and he tells it for 93 minutes without once explaining it. We think it one of the great comedies.

The film begins with the servants leaving. One by one the cook, the maids and the footmen invent excuses and slip out before the guests arrive; only the butler, Julio (Claudio Brook), stays. Then the guests come up the stairs, and a minute later they come up the stairs again, the same shot, the same greetings. Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza, who has the story credit, do this several times: a toast repeated word for word, an introduction made twice, and nobody on screen notices. We laughed at the second staircase, then started watching for the next repeat. The strange thing happens, the camera does not flinch, and the guests carry on being polite.

Gabriel Figueroa shoots it in a level, unhurried black and white that refuses to tell you what is funny. The camera sits at chest height, the guests arranged across the frame like a group portrait, and stays there while the portrait goes to pieces. Jesús Bracho’s production design gives them brocade, dark wood and one archway they cannot cross, and Georgette Somohano’s gowns and dinner jackets get greasier and more creased by the day. Carlos Savage cuts plainly and never underlines a gag. Raúl Lavista’s music mostly stays out of the way; what we hear is the piano, then talk, then the sheep.

Silvia Pinal plays Leticia, nicknamed ‘La Valkiria’, the one unmarried woman in the party and the one who sees most clearly, and she gives her a stillness that stands out among the fidgeting. Enrique Rambal’s Edmundo Nóbile is the host who keeps offering hospitality long after there is nothing left to offer. Augusto Benedico’s Dr. Conde is the voice of reason, which in a Buñuel film is itself a joke; he takes pulses and prescribes patience. Brook’s Julio is the quiet centre, a servant so well trained that he goes on serving after his employers have stopped behaving like employers.

The film is funny for its first half and then it stops being only funny. Buñuel takes away the food, then the water, then the manners, and does not comment. There is a moment, which we will not place, when a group of these people gather round one of their number in the dark, and Figueroa lights it exactly as he lit the soup course. We were horrified, and what horrified us was not what they were about to do but how reasonable they sounded proposing it. Buñuel has no interest in why they cannot leave. He is interested in what they become when they cannot.

It is not without faults. Several guests, Antonio Bravo’s Sergio Russell and Luis Beristáin’s Cristián Ugalde among them, never become more than a face and a grievance. The middle stretch marks time, with a few too many scenes of people asking the doctor what he thinks. And anyone who needs a film to say what it means will find this one rude. It does not. We think that is right, but we have sat beside people who did not.

Buñuel made it in Mexico a year after *Viridiana*, with the same star and the same producer, Gustavo Alatriste, and a decade before [*The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie*](https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie), another dinner nobody manages to eat. This is the hardest of the three: shorter, colder, less pleased with itself. Most critics rate it highly, and we rate it a little higher still, partly for the sheep.

Watch it in company, in one sitting, and do not look up what the title means until afterwards. Then try to get up off the sofa.

*Fi1m score 87, published 26 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is The Exterminating Angel worth watching?**

*The Exterminating Angel* is worth watching for anyone with a taste for dry, cruel comedy, and we scored it 87. Buñuel locks a party of wealthy guests in a drawing room for 93 minutes and never explains why they cannot leave; the film is funny for its first half and then turns quietly horrifying. Viewers who need a film to say what it means will find it rude.

**How long is The Exterminating Angel, and what is it rated?**

*The Exterminating Angel* runs 1h 33m. It is a comedy and drama film.

**Where can I watch The Exterminating Angel in Hungary?**

*The Exterminating Angel* is not on any streaming or rental service in Hungary at the moment. It is available in 1 other country; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How does The Exterminating Angel compare to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie?**

*The Exterminating Angel* is the harder and colder of Buñuel's two dinner-party films, and we think it the better one. Both trap the rich around a meal, but [*The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie*](https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie) is longer, more indulgent and repeats its joke of interrupted dinners once or twice too often. Start with the earlier film if you want the sharper version; the later one is warmer company.

**What should I watch after The Exterminating Angel?**

After *The Exterminating Angel*, try [*The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie*](https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie) (1972, Fi1m 83): Buñuel’s later dinner party, where the rich sit down and never get to eat. Then [*The Rules of the Game*](https://film.one/film/the-rules-of-the-game) (1939, Fi1m 91): Renoir’s country-house weekend, where the manners hold until suddenly they do not; and [*Triangle of Sadness*](https://film.one/film/triangle-of-sadness) (2022, Fi1m 66): The wealthy stranded and stripped of staff, louder than Buñuel but recognisably his heirs.

### Reviews we read (11)

- **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (4/4): Gonzalez sees the film as a wicked, sharply critical portrait of bourgeois dependence and social hypocrisy. He praises Buñuel’s darkly comic, sadistic staging of the guests’ confinement and unraveling. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-exterminating-angel/)
- **Film Comment**, Mark Harris (85/100, inferred): Harris presents Buñuel’s surrealist film as a timeless success. The standfirst singles out its surrealist premise of aristocrats unable to leave a room. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/cinema-67-revisited-exterminating-angel/)
- **The Guardian**, Rob Mackie (85/100, inferred): Mackie praises the film as a funny, vicious dissection of civilisation. He singles out its surreal juxtapositions, barbed dialogue and collapsing pomposity as the source of its comic bite. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/sep/01/dvdreviews.shopping)
- **Time Out**, TM (85/100, inferred): The review is strongly positive, describing Buñuel’s film as brilliant and disconcertingly funny. It singles out the surrealist joke at the heart of the premise for praise. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-exterminating-angel)
- **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (4/5): Parkinson describes the film as a searing, pessimistic condemnation of bourgeois convention and morality. He praises its brilliantly played cast and the way the nightmare dinner party conveys its unsettling argument. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-jxci8k/the-exterminating-angel/)
- **Empire**, David Parkinson (75/100, inferred): Parkinson finds the film defiantly surreal and difficult to decipher, but ultimately a superb example of its kind. He praises its satirical exposure of bourgeois privilege and the primal instincts beneath social manners. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/exterminating-angel-review/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, MARK CHALON SMITH (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a sharp, entertaining broadside against social hypocrisy and religion. He praises Buñuel’s surreal humor and the way repeated events expose the guests’ stilted lives. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-25-ca-62747-story.html)
- **Variety**, Variety Staff (75/100, inferred): The review finds the film an unusual, powerful, and solid dreamlike parable. It especially praises the ensemble acting and Gabriel Figueroa’s cinematography. [Read](https://variety.com/1961/film/reviews/el-angel-exterminador-1200420200/)
- **RogerEbert.com** (65/100, inferred): The page content is blocked, so the critic’s verdict cannot be verified. No specific praise or complaint is available from the supplied text. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-exterminating-angel-1962)
- **Paste**, Steve Dollar (80/100, inferred): Dollar praises the release as a showcase for Buñuel’s darkly comic, surreal style. He singles out the trapped dinner guests’ descent into chaos and the film’s strange, unsettling imagery. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/article/the-exterminating-angelsimon-of-the-desert)
- **Eye for Film**, Andrea Mullaney (70/100, inferred): Mullaney finds the surrealist satire compelling and more than watchable, despite its unclear logic. She especially praises the film’s striking photography, expressive faces, and use of shadows. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/exterminating-angel-film-review-by-andrea-mullaney)

## Details

- **Director:** Luis Buñuel
- **Director:** Luis Buñuel
- **Screenplay:** Luis Buñuel
- **Story:** Luis Alcoriza
- **Cinematography:** Gabriel Figueroa
- **Editor:** Carlos Savage
- **Music:** Raúl Lavista
- **Production design:** Jesús Bracho
- **Costume design:** Georgette Somohano
- **Producer:** Gustavo Alatriste
- **Cast:** Silvia Pinal as Leticia 'La Valkiria'; Jacqueline Andere as Alicia Roc; Claudio Brook as Butler Julio; Enrique Rambal as Edmundo Nóbile; José Baviera as Leandro Gómez; Augusto Benedico as Dr. Carlos Conde; Luis Beristáin as Cristián Ugalde; Antonio Bravo as Sergio Russell
- **Runtime:** 1h 33m
- **First release (Romania):** 16 May 1962
- **Genres:** Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

## Where to watch in Hungary

Not streaming, renting or buying in Hungary at the last check.

Also available in: ES. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie* (1972), Fi1m 83: Buñuel’s later dinner party, where the rich sit down and never get to eat — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie.md)
- *The Rules of the Game* (1939), Fi1m 91: Renoir’s country-house weekend, where the manners hold until suddenly they do not — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-rules-of-the-game.md)
- *Dogtooth* (2009): A family who cannot leave the garden, filmed with the same straight face
- *La Grande Bouffe* (1973): Four men lock themselves in a villa to eat; the joke is not kind
- *Triangle of Sadness* (2022), Fi1m 66: The wealthy stranded and stripped of staff, louder than Buñuel but recognisably his heirs — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/triangle-of-sadness.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-exterminating-angel