DVD Watch

The Exterminating Angel

Simon of the Desert

Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939) played ball and jacks compared to The Exterminating Angel. Bourgeois "charm" never suffered a more wicked lashing than with the deliciously straight face of Luis Buñuel. Between unparalleled surrealism old and new – Salvador Dalí collaboration/1928 debut Un Chien Anadalou and penultimate film The Phantom of Liberty (1974) – the Spanish director's late-career commercial and artistic peak run begins at fellow Criterion marvel Viridiana (1961) and knocks out Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Belle de Jour (1967), Tristana (1970), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Mademoiselles Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, and Delphine Seyrig were never so grateful for a Spanish Francophile. The Exterminating Angel (1965) follows Viridiana and makes that sacrilegious dysfunction seem heavenly levelheaded compared to the alternately hilarious and atavistic behavior of the idly tuxedoed and gowned, who become trapped during a house party one evening – in a living room with nothing barring their exit except existential poverty. "I think the lower classes are less sensitive to pain," offhands one guest. "Have you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of emotion." This lot should be so lucky. Somebody break out the lithium. Though their predicament never comes with an explanation, even in the face of the dinner party's mock sleuthery, neither is one necessary. They're trapped by vacuity. What happens once panic sets in, however, washes in straight out of The Poseidon Adventure, with a delicate dab of horror just for fun. No less satirical, surreal, or fun is 1965 short film "Simon of the Desert," in which a Christian ascetic spends six years, months, and days (45 minutes reel time) in the titular desert until he's visited thrice by top-billed Exterminating Angel Silvia Pinal as the devil. If there's one dance that should have caught on in the swinging 1960s, it's Radioactive Flesh from "Simon of the Desert." Both films are part of Buñuel's Mexican period, and both DVDs come with fascinating documentaries, particularly a new, feature-length jewel on the double-disc The Exterminating Angel, in which the director's late-period writing partner and son take an enchanting global reminisce over the life of a radioactive screen sorcerer.

Also Out Now ...

El Norte (The Criterion Collection, $39.95): Forever topical tale of a Guatemalan sibling couple on their perilous trek north for a "better life" as immigrant workers in the director's hometown of San Diego. The 1983 mass-market debut by Gregory Nava (director of Selena, screenwriter of Frida) includes a second-disc making-of wherein screen fiction becomes real-life border drama.