L'Âge d'or

In the Tate Modern's "Dalí & Film" exhibition, the fourteen-odd rooms were mostly paintings but three or four had films of one kind or another. Having just seen Un Chien Andalou I decided to watch this one as well and was lucky to catch it just as it started. I say lucky because there is really nothing to tell you when these things are starting or ending. This is maybe OK with a short film that lasts seven minutes or a three minute clip from Spellbound but with a film that lasts an hour I really don't understand why the Tate didn't make at least a discrete effort to let us know start times – maybe it is beneath them to act like a cinema but it does mean that people were constantly flowing in and out and the implication is that the films can be just dipped in and out of.

With this film though, you do need to be in from the start because, unlike Un Chien Andalou, there is more of a plot here and the film has fewer of Dalí's images across the running time. That said the plot here isn't any easier to follow if you did manage to catch it from the very start because this is still very much a surrealist film in structure and content even if it has fewer of the images that made the first film I'd seen so engaging. With Buñuel forming more of the film than Dalí, the film does take on more symbolism in less surreal ways but yet it is still quite hard to follow. To me as a viewer this was a bit of a downside because there was less to stimulate me and more to frustrate me as I struggle to understand the meaning of what I was watching.

Despite this I still did find it interesting and you can see why (to a point) that the screening did draw a reaction from those that saw it as attacking conservative values in its depiction of violent attacks etc. Quite why it was hardly screened for fifty years though, I can't say. With a difficult plot to follow and an hour to watch, the film asked a lot of me and I'm afraid I wasn't really up to the challenge and I did struggle to follow along. The scattering of surrealist imagery did help to hold my attention though and it is not without value – just a lot harder to watch than I would have liked it to have been.

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.

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.

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.

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.