L'Âge d'or

Some movies you'll watch because they touch your soul or challenge you in ways that grow.

Some you'll watch because you want to be exposed to adventure or shock outside your experience; these won't directly feed you, but they'll help you situate yourself in a larger world than you otherwise would have. And after all, the hard parts of life are in what you choose not to accept.

And then there are movies that do neither of these things, that you will watch out of obligation, or because you have a need for historical context. These are pretty worthless experiences in terms of building a life.

The problem is of course that often you don't know which of the three a film will be, going in. You might get some indication from people you trust, but because a life in film is so personal, you really won't know until you go on the blind date.

For me, this was pretty worthless. Yes, yes, I know for many Bunuel is the epitome of the sublime and rich. And you should know (if you don't) that among my greatest film experiences are some very strange films, very strange indeed.

It isn't that this isn't cinematic, or symbolically deep, or apolitically/politically friendly to the way I think. Its how it gets there that is off base. Its the deviance from real deviance that annoys me.

Part of the problem is that this is successful alternative art, which means that it is successful commercial art. Which in turn means that it can be simply explained and the explanation is not only widely acceptable but simply coded in shorthand. Surely all this is true.

When the term "surreal" is used, generally it is used incorrectly to denote any film image or world that differs from reality or seems strange. But when it is used correctly, meaning according to consensus theory, it always revolves around Bunuel, and in particular this film and the one he genuinely did with Dali. So because they invented surreal cinema, they define and control the term. That by itself chafes me, and I have my own alternative definition that doesn't come from their philosophy.

Its because the philosophy is wholly contrary. It isn't a philosophy at all but a rejection of philosophy, an anti-order. Its packaged anarchy, carefully selecting the things that they use and the things they oppose without clearly differentiating them.

So okay: against linearity, against narrative, against history, against religion (an easy one), against deliberate love. But for an illinear linear narrative, for establishing its own history (celebrated by countless film school professors; what else can they do?); for a sort of transcendent "accidental" love.

It is its own enemy. If there were a Bunuel alive today as he sold his image, the first thing he would do is attack the church or the surreal.

My regular readers know that in nearly all matters cinematic, I cleave to the Spanish and avoid the French. But in the matter of the surreal, I'd like to you consider the reverse: get your surrealism from Alfred Jarry, not Bunuel.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Just a few days prior to viewing "L'Age d'Or," I had sketched out a few of my views on Surrealism, and will begin by complimenting this review with them...

"Possibly the most accurate description of surrealism came from film director Luis Bunuel when he called it `a rape to the conscious.' This is how it is, and how it should be, for it is a form of art that forces the spectator into the paradoxical mind state that is surrealism. To view a document of surrealism is to be simultaneously repulsed and delighted. As such, this is surrealism: the blending of two or more contradictory emotions to form one emotion divorced from logic. There can not realistically be a like or dislike of a piece of pure surrealist art, for to like or dislike something requires decision, and decision requires logic. Surrealism is an art form to be experienced purely on a visceral level, and not, as many rational forms of art, on an intellectual one. Likewise, the creation of surrealist art requires the subversion of the intellect, for it demands complete spontaneity, unsuppressed by ego or super-ego dictatorship. So in many ways surrealism is the most pure form of art."

If surrealism is the most pure example of art, then "L'Age d'Or" is the most pure example of cinema, perfectly fitting the requirements stated above. It is a delightfully subversive, ecstatically liberating, maddeningly offensive bid for individual freedom. And, most ironically, the truest love story ever told!

Though L'Age d'Or has a firmer plot line than "Un Chien Andalou," Bunuel's previous film, a 16 minute marvel, it is still more dreamlike. This is because while "Un Chien Andalou's" surrealist images are more contained, one bizarre image after another forming a barely apprehensible link, "L'Age d'Or's" are far more detached, because they jut awkwardly out of a noticeable plot line. Surrealism must accentuate the bizzare found in a perfectly normal situation, and while "Un Chien" does this, there is still very little normal in the film. Not to say that it is any less inspired than "L'Age d'Or," quite the contrary, but ironically, it is "L'Age d'Or's" use of plot that makes it all the more surreal.

The "plot" of "L'Age d'Or" is about how we compromise ourselves in the name of society, more specifically how we compromise our sexual desire. Whether the man and the woman, the centers of the film, trying desperately to overcome social obstacles to consummate their love, are actually in love is never made perfectly clear, but they do suffer the same barriers couples find in society today. The majority of the humor in the film comes from the ways its immortal couple disrespects this need to compromise, and the sexual misplacements that occur when they are forced to abide by it (the infamous toe fellatio scene is hysterically erotic). Another recurring idea is that society is built on this compromise, and due to it, is always lingering on the edge of madness.

Like he did with "Un Chien Andalou," in "L'Age d'Or" director Bunuel disrupts rational time and space continuum to satisfy his own flights of fancy. In an early sequence, a group of people, dressed in contemporary 30's clothing, step off some historic looking ships to lay the first stone of what is to be Imperial Rome. We then cut to Rome in it's contemporary glory, where we find the people looking no different, and the main character's, seen during the previous scene, not really looking any older. What is Bunuel trying to say with this scene? That things do not really ever change. Maybe he's just once again indulging in the beauty of the irrational.

The beauty of the irrational... That was something Bunuel clung to throughout his career, but it was never again so evident, so pure as it was in the days of "L'Age d'Or." I spent a great deal of time searching for this little treasure, and now that I've found it, I have no regrets. Love it or hate it, love it and hate it, "L'Age d'Or" is the type of film that will never be made again. It is too alive with the possibilities of it's medium, too fresh to be reproduced. And too brilliant, audacious, and liberating to be topped.

Dream-like, funny, and compelling, Luis Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece is required viewing for anyone who claims to have a grasp of the history of cinema.

Too thought-provoking to be called hallucinogenic, L'Age D'Or nevertheless has the disjointed narrative of a dream. It makes sense on its own terms the same way a dream does.

Monty Python fans may see in its brazen non sequitors a similarity to the Python TV skits. Material like this can only come in small chunks; the message would be lost in a conventional narrative.

One memorable scene has a (fully-clothed) couple embracing and kissing while crowd of people arrives and breaks them up. A city is constructed on the very spot of this thwarted love. Message: civilization is built on repression of natural urges. If the man and women ever get together again, the world as we know it will be destroyed. The counterculture movement of the 60s echoed this and other themes that the surrealists explored 35 years previously.

This extremely influential movie should be viewed by anyone interested in Luis Buñuel's career and anyone interested in surrealism in film and anyone looking for a mind-expanding experience.

At least sixty years ahead of its time. This collection of surreal scenes satirising every possible social value you can think of and revelling in anything considered by the aristocrats to be vulgar was made with a delicious sense for black comedy, a taste for which would not become socially acceptable for sixty years. This movie caused riots on its first release in 1930, and was banned for forty years. If you see this on the program to be shown at an art gallery near you, like i did, you won't regret seeing it. Think of it as Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel sticking their finger up at everything everyone else takes seriously, and laughing at their being offended. Seventy years later, the art gallery audience i was with were laughing along with Bunuel and Dali. This is about the most modern feeling thing you'll see from early cinema. I'll give you a sample: a couple are such nymphomaniacs, whenever they see each other, they can't stop from leaping on each other and writhing on the ground together. At one point in the movie, they are kissing, and all of a sudden he sees the foot of a statue behind her and is distracted by its beauty. He becomes dazed and zoned on the foot. She pulls away from him, tries to talk to him, he holds his hand up to her face as if to say: "hang on, just give me a minute." Then he feels compelled to leave her. Left on her own, mourning her momentary separation from her lustful partner, she begins sucking on the toes of the statue, as she was sucking on the fingers of her love a few scenes before. Camera cuts to a close-up of the statue's face, as if to check its reaction. The entire audience broke up at this. It was all too much. An absolute riot which can only be appreciated today as taking the p*ss out of every form of conservatism you can imagine.

WARNING= it is at times disturbing. If you are at all feint-hearted, and can not separate movies from reality, especially surrealist movies from reality, then stay away.

This film is often regarded as the best surrealistic film of all time. Like in his previous film "un chien andalou", Bunuel introduces us a film with a cock-and-bull screenplay. In this movie, he's using the power of his imagination and this is one of the surrealism's goals. The movie starts with a documentary on the scorpions, then some thieves are discovering four archbishops on the rocks, next, come the founders of Rome. Later, in Rome, a young woman is finding a cow on her bed; during a reception, in a beautiful castle, a tipcart full of workers is crossing the living-room and other weird events like these ones happen later..... It's easy to find out why this movie was forbidden for a long time in France (it was finally re-released in 1981). If you think that some elements of the story (if there is one!) like the four archbishops or the tipcart are funny, well they aren't. It's only his second film and Bunuel's showing us his obsessions: he's laughing at religion and upper middle class by ridiculing them and he is against the conformity. That's why his movie's got nonsense and even the title: why the Golden Age? However, behind all this nonsense, there is a love story between Gaston Modot and Lya Lys which is more sketched out than told.

Moreover, the film also created a huge scandal due to the last sequence. It was inspired by the most horrible French novel: "les 120 journées de Sodome" by the Marquis de Sade (Bunuel used to admire him). This French writer's novels were forbidden for a long time due to their violence and their philosophy. In the movie, the scene created a double scandal because the count of Blangis's got the Christ' head! This film is incredible and fascinating due to the screenplay and its unexpected events. If you want to discover Bunuel's films, this one is a good start