L’age d’Or (1930) Director: Luis Buñuel

One of the first sound films made in France, L’age d’Or or “the age of gold” is a surprisingly compelling surrealist film with the screenplay written by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, not unlike their earlier film, Un Chien Andalou. It is a strangely Freudian film that is linked by a series of vignettes, only connected by the similar sexual themes of a woman and a man (never named) trying to consummate their relationship but prevented by the repressive mores of various establishments, such as the church, high society, and general bourgeois values.

It runs at about 1 hour in length, and by the time the film was ready for production Salvador Dali had already fallen out of the project. Conservative activists and press demonstrated heavily against the film and even went as far as to throw ink at the screen and destroyed works of art by Dali.

Review

★★★☆☆

The film is amusing in its confusing and scattered surrealist style, yet somehow it manages to be worthwhile for lovers of classic films. Though I am generally not a fan of the absurd or the surrealist movements, this film is surprisingly enjoyable.