L'Âge d'or

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

After completing Un Chien Andalusia with Salvador Dali (who helped write the screenplay) Bunuel began his new film titled L'age D'or, translated as The Golden Age. Altho not entirely collaborating on the screenplay, Dali still received his credential for L'age D'or; however, this film was primarily a sole project for Bunuel. In this film Bunuel attacks religion with the famous image of a skeletal clergy resting on the shore of Catalonia. In addition, the film contains other sensational and bizarre imagery (i.e. a cow laying on a bed, a woman having a bowel movement, a man with a boulder on his head, a festering wound on a man's eye, and the like). Obviously, L'age D'or was controversial at it's time, and still is for some audiences. However, the films takes at least 3 times to completely understand Bunuel's symbolism (the way I saw it), as well as the ambiguous conclusion which is still a bit hazy for me. The film's pace is rather slow and can be dull at moments; nevertheless, it takes a lot of patience to even enjoy this film, considering the irregular structure of the story-line. However, that doesn't mean the film is a bomb: it's definitely a standard in the history of art-and-film, influencing a dozen surrealist filmmakers (ie, Cocteau, Fellini) as well as underground directors. In Short, this film will start to grow on the viewer after several viewings. Bunuel was ahead of his time as a director, therefore L'age D'or may seem out of place for todays audiences as well as todays critics.

Written on August 30th, upon my first viewing: I'm not saying that I love it, though. It's infinitely more watchable than the other two Buñuel "masterpieces" that I've seen, the execrably boring The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie and the somewhat lame Belle de Jour. I have been told time and time again to go back to his early stuff, that I'd be much more likely to enjoy those films. And those who pushed me were right. Of course, when I sat down to watch it, I didn't have the highest hopes. Immediately, I began to nitpick. "What is that supposed to mean?!?!" "What the heck is going on!?!?" My favorite three letters became, throughout the first half hour of this film, WT&F. But, as much as its narrative (or anti-narrative) was annoying me, its technical aspects were very much delighting me. The cinematography is quite good, the editing is fabulous and unique, and the use of sound is simply fantastic. Eventually, I just decided that the narrative wasn't supposed to make much sense and that Buñuel's purpose was anything but a storyteller. He was after the absurdist image and the absurdist mood. After that, I had a lot more fun and enjoyed it quite a bit. All good film watchers have to eventually train themselves away from depending on narrative. I'd still not call it a masterpiece, or even a great film, but it was very interesting and quite entertaining. I give it an 8/10. However, I do plan to rewatch it, since it is short and I do have it for another four days. Perhaps, now that I can watch it entirely prepared from the very beginning, I will raise that score.

Upon watching it the next day: Nope, sorry. I didn't get anything new the second time 'round. I still liked it as much, which is a huge compliment, but I certainly didn't like it more.

I've always felt that it was somewhat unfortunate that the concept of a cinema presented as art has been largely abandoned in the last sixty years or so in favour of a cinema of wanton commodity. The idea that a film is little more than a consumer product intended to offer passive entertainment that won't require any kind of further thought or challenges for the viewer is incredibly sad, and inevitably leads to the endless regurgitation of codes, conventions, stories and images that we're currently seeing through the endless production of re-makes, literary adaptations and variations on TV. I suppose it depends largely on how you view the notion of "art" in an entertainment sense. I'd gather that very few of the people posting negative comments here would gladly spend the afternoon in an art gallery, not simply learning something about the artist and their work, but actually enjoying it. Many think of art as something incredibly serious; there to be admired from a distance without ever attempting to form a personal connection or engagement with it on an emotional or intellectual level. It is this attitude that leads to the various implications of the term "art film", which now has a number of incredibly negative connotations that suggest something po-faced and pretentious; the idea that these films should be sat through and looked at with no real appreciation for the sense of fun, frivolity and subversive glee that the filmmakers bring to their work or the ideas behind it.

As one of the previous reviewer already noted, it was not Buñuel's intention for this film to be looked at as something entirely serious; though there are certainly serious ideas being expressed. Instead, you could approach it as something radical, like rock n' roll or punk music, with the idea of a cinema of revolution and defiance that goes against all accepted conventions of what cinema is and what cinema should attain to; as well as commenting on the nature of society - with all its bourgeois values and the (then) prevalent idea of religious hypocrisy - in a way that would inspire thought and provoke a reaction. You might not enjoy it as much as a more conventional film that offers a plot and a theme and characters you can believe in - and all presented in a way that is comfortable and safe - but the experience, for me at least, is as a hundred times more rewarding than the latest Marvel adaptation or exercise in Hollywood nostalgia. Look at the current films at the top of the US box-office and it becomes clear that films like L'Âge d'Or (1930) and the proceeding Un Chien Andalou (1929) have become part of the minority. Nonetheless, when we view this film within the context of something like Kung-Fu Panda (2008), You Don't Mess With Zohan (2008), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Sex and the City (2008) - all currently top of the American box office - we can see the extent of how facile and meaningless much of contemporary cinema has become.

It has never been my belief that a film requires a story or a character that we attach our own thoughts and feelings to, but rather, can survive simply as a platform for creative thought and artistic expression. The true power of cinema is in the sense that it is the only real art form that combines elements from every single separate art-form that you can possibly think of; from performance art, to photography, editing and design and of course, the various literary traditions that gave us the ideas of narrative and character. So, with L'Âge d'Or, we are presented with a mad jumble of images all flowing dreamlike from one scene to the next - sometimes boring, sometimes fascinating - often without interpretation or any kind of greater context outside of the broader notions of surrealism for the sake of it. It's still seen as something radical - perhaps even dangerous - seventy-odd years after it was first released, but really, its classic cinema in the traditional sense; e.g. a collection of abstract but penetrating images intended to be viewed by as many people as possible at the same time to create a shared and sensory experience. In this sense, the film is almost beyond criticism, or at least, beyond the higher intellectual/interpretative level of criticism that it normally receives, with the film standing as an ode to cinema at its most simple and sublime. All notions of intellectualism, or pseudo-intellectualism, are therefore thrown out of the window as the film transfixes us with some stunningly imaginative images that flicker to life on the screen.

To seek answers from the film is missing the point, as there are no questions to be asked. The point of the film is not to entertain on the base levels of character, narrative and simple human emotions, but rather, to present us with something that we've never seen before. It's artist expression. If you have no interest in this then you'll have no interest in the film - which, although incredibly difficult and almost certainly not to all tastes, is still as close to the purest sense of cinema as you can possibly get. Some of the images are intended to shock, others to amuse and others to titillate and provoke thought, even when there seems to be nothing to really think about. Above all else, it is an experience, like all films, and one that is entirely visual and approachable on even the most immediate of levels. Don't think too much about it, or attempt to see something that isn't there. The point of surrealism was to go beyond such notions of the real and mundane to present something illogical, imaginative and devoid of rational thinking in order to find a new way of approaching the world. That's what this film represents.

Luis Bunuel was a filmmaker of great imagination and scathing wit, and Salvador Dali was a magnificent, albeit demented, artist and painter. Combined they made Un Chien Andalou (The Andalousian Dog), a short-film that somehow made it through the decades to reach another generation after another. This is because surrealism, the field they were working in, was one that could be endlessly creative. Surrealists could and still can captivate, startle, amuse, primarily provoke and/or even delight an audience by the story elements and images that come right out of fantasy, both on the bright and dark/bleak side of things. L'Age D'Or was a chance for Bunuel to go further, and if his goal was to enlighten the audience as well as to stir the s***storm, he succeeded.

In the first five to ten minutes of L'Age D'Or, I didn't know whether I knew exactly what was going on, or was totally boggled- the first images Bunuel puts forth are of scorpions (insects were one of his fascinations), and how they're shaped and how ferocious they can be. Then he cuts to some men who have guns by their side, walking through deserted rocks. THEN, after this, he cuts to a ship docking by the coastline where the guys with the guns were walking, and he never goes back to them again. Instead he focuses on one of the bourgeoisie men who is raping a woman, and who is dragged off into the imperial city. If you look at this story structure it doesn't seem to make sense - what is it that Bunuel and Dali are trying to get at here? It was when the rest of the story unfolded- with a particular bourgeoisie woman at a party who meets the man who was dragged off of the rocks- that I understood the logic I had first discovered in Un Chien Andalou and a later work of his, Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Bunuel doesn't just toss a bunch of ideas together and think that it'll all make sense. In the thought process of a dream - one with light-hearted moments with romance and wonderful music, as well as terrifying moments like a cow on a bed or a man shooting his son in broad daylight - L'Age D'Or works like a kind of clockwork. Though the last ten five minutes of the film did throw me off almost completely, by then I didn't care. I knew that, overall, Bunuel accomplished his goals of making a film that hypnotizes, repulses, opens the eyes a little wider, and almost gets one cross-eyed. With his attacks on whatever was considered decent, straightforward art in cinema, both political, sociological, psychological, and personal, there are many messages to be seen in the work. However, when it's looked at as a whole, this is simply a work of art, one that has to be interpreted by the individual. Like one of Dali's paintings, one could view the work as nonsense, the work of an amateur mentally masturbating for the viewer. One could even see it as being rather entertaining when looking at the human elements that come through from the actors and the actions that take place. And one could see it as meaning so much that it will take another couple of viewings to "get" what was being said.

I turned off the movie feeling breathless, like being put through a washing machine of astonishing turns and emotions. At one point my jaw dropped, and then at the next point I smiled. To sum it up, I definitely want, and need, to see it again...one more note- this is a very, very hard film to find, one that has been kept out of circulation on video (it was also kept out of circulation in movie theaters for decades due to its controversies at the time of its release), but to seek it out is to take a chance that could equally pay off or disturb a particular viewer.