1. The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Edmundo and his wife Lucia host a lavish sit down party for the creme de la creme of Mexican high society. The servants hurriedly flee the mansion but the guests inexplicably take off their jackets and settle down for the night in chairs and sofas. There is something radically wrong. The guests are psychologically trapped in the house. They are stuck there for days eating what little food and fluids they have. Tensions rise as the situation gets desperate. Sergio, an elderly man, dies and a young couple commit suicide in a cupboard. As if things couldn't get any stranger, the guests break down a wall coming across a water pipe and some sheep and a bear enter the room. The sheep are killed and roasted on fires made out of furniture. Someone suggests that Edmundo is responsible for their plight and should thus be sacrificed. A young, foreign guest called Letitia manages to persuade them not to follow this course of action and she shows them how to get out of their predicament. The surviving guests are able to leave the house and to give thanks, they go to a chapel. The exact same scenario happens in the church - the congregation are unable to leave the church, but there are no party goers among them - they have disappeared. There is a riot on the streets which prompts a military clamp down. In the last scene a flock of sheep enter the church to the sound of gunfire. This is a bizarre set up, but Buñuel makes it work. The film is an attack on high society who are seen to be stuck in their position in a high class dinner party and gradually revert into savages, discussing the sacrifice of their host. It is a hoot to see them all descend into barbarity and eat random sheep that wander in. The film also appears to be a lampoon of the Catholic church with the same 'We can't leave here' affliction affecting the congregation. There is also a riot - about what? We see the military go into overdrive, and sheep enter a church. Buñuel doesn't have anything good to say about anyone. The guests' wealth cannot save them from their dilemma and Buñuel's film is filled with allegory, it is open to all sorts of interpretation, but it's mostly anti-clerical and anti-bourgeoisie in tone and theme.