Review #393: 'L'Age d'Or' (1930)

In 1929, the art world and movie-going audiences were shocked to the core when Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali teamed-up to make the short surrealistic masterpiece Un Chien Andalou. Scenes of eye-slitting and ants crawling out of open palms caused revulsion and awe in equal measures. A year later, Bunuel and Dali planned another surreal satire, but the two had a fall-out, leading to Bunuel taking the solo reigns and using his film-making know-how to make a slightly more accessible and narrative-driven piece, and this time feature-length (well, 63 minutes). The result caused chaotic scenes of rioting, violence and destruction upon its premiere. Bunuel must have been laughing his ass off.

The film is basically a collection of small vignettes that revolve around a couple, the Man (Gaston Madot) and the Young Girl (Lya Lys) who are passionately in love. Yet their frequent attempts at expressing their love are repeatedly thwarted by various groups and people. There is also a short documentary about scorpions, a bourgeois party where a small boy is shot with a shotgun and a serving woman gets blown out of the kitchen by a fire, and an epilogue detailing an 120-day orgy (a reference to the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom) which leads to the death and scalping of the participating women.

I have to admit that whilst viewing this mind-fucking masterpiece, I was dumbfounded as to what was going on or what the film was trying to get across. Yet like all great art, it stayed with me, and the more I thought about it, the clearer it became. The message seems to be how society and religion can suppress natural sexual urges and expression to the point that it can cause violence within humanity. The film is full of sexual imagery - most memorably in the scene where the Young Girl, seemingly nymphomaniacal in her lust for the Man, performs fellatio on the toe of a statue. The camera then amusingly cuts to the statues face, as if we are expecting a reaction from it.

It is relentless in its mockery of religion and the upper classes. In the most shocking scene (even by today's standards), we are shown an idealistic portrayal of a father-and-son. The father sits holding an object (I think he is rolling a cigarette) in the scenic garden of their home, while their son playfully hops about him. His son then knocks the object out of his hand and runs off, causing the father to fume. The father then picks up his shotgun and shoots the boy dead. And then shoots his limp body again. The son seems to represent free-spirit and the father society, and it seems the message here is that if you refuse to conform to society's wishes, then society will crush you. A relatively simple point sledge-hammered home. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to call this one of the most important films ever made, as it pushed the boundaries of what was possible at the time and remains just as shocking and as ground-breaking as it was 82 years ago.


Directed by: Luis Buñuel
Starring: Gaston Modot, Lya Lys, Caridad De Laberdesque, Max Ernst
Country: France

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie