L'Âge d'or
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| L'Âge d'Or | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster of L'Âge d'Or |
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| Directed by | Luis Buñuel |
| Produced by | Vicomte Charles de Noailles Marie-Laure de Noailles |
| Written by | Luis Buñuel Salvador Dalí |
| Starring | Gaston Modot Lya Lys Caridad de Laberdesque Max Ernst Josep Llorens Artigas Lionel Salem Germaine Noizet Duchange |
| Music by | Luis Buñuel Georges van Parys Richard Wagner Felix Mendelssohn W. A. Mozart Claude Debussy Ludwig van Beethoven Franz Schubert |
| Distributed by | Corinth Films (1979 U.S. release) |
| Release date(s) | 29 November 1930 1 November 1979 (U.S.) |
| Running time | 63 minutes |
| Language | French |
| Budget | 1 million francs |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age) is a 1930 surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
The film cost a million francs to produce and was financed by the nobleman Vicomte Charles de Noailles, who beginning in 1928 commissioned a film every year for the birthday of his wife Marie-Laure de Noailles. When it was first released, there was a storm of protest. The film premiered at Studio 28 in Paris on 29 November 1930 after receiving its permit from the Board of Censors. In order to get the permit, Buñuel had to present the film to the Board as the dream of a madman.
On 3 December 1930, a group of incensed members of the fascist League of Patriots threw ink at the screen, assaulted members of the audience, and destroyed art works by Dalí, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and others on display in the lobby. On 10 December, the Prefect of Police of Paris, Jean Chiappe, arranged to have the film banned after the Board of Censors reviewed the film. The Noailles family pulled the film from distribution for nearly 50 years. The film did not have its official United States premiere until 1-15 November 1979 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco.
[edit] Summary
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general. In one notable scene, the young girl passionately fellates the toe of a religious statue.
In the final vignette, the place card narration tells of an orgy of 120 days of depraved acts (a reference to the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom) and tells us that the survivors of the orgy are ready to emerge. From the door of a castle emerges the Duc de Blangis, who strongly resembles Christ, with his long robes and beard. When a young girl runs out of the castle, the Duc comforts the girl, before taking her back into the castle. A scream is heard and the Duc emerges again, his beard mysteriously vanished. The film suddenly cuts to its final image, with the scalps of the women flapping in the wind on a crucifix, accompanied by jovial music. It has been suggested that this, along with scenes of violent expression earlier in the film as the lovestruck protagonist is manhandled along by two enforcers, may suggest that the film's message is that sexual repression, whether propagated by civil bourgeois society or by the church, breeds violence[1]. This scene is alluded to in the opening sequence, which is an excerpt from a short science film about a scorpion. There we are informed that the Scorpion has five prismatic articulations, culminating in a sting.
[edit] Cast
- Gaston Modot as The Man
- Lya Lys as the Young Girl
- Caridad de Laberdesque as a Chambermaid and Little Girl
- Max Ernst as the Leader of men in cottage
- Josep Llorens Artigas (Governor)
- Lionel Salem as Duke of Blangis
- Germaine Noizet as Marquise
- Duchange as Conductor
The film's illustrations were created by Luis Ortiz Rosales.
[edit] External links
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