L'Age D'Or (1930)
A film by Luis Buņuel
This film caused riots on its release in Paris theatres. The film's theme, like in many of Buņuel's others, is a man's desire for a woman that is always out of reach. The film focuses on a man's attempt to make love to a woman. He is lead around the streets by two men, glaring into images which become animated. He is seeing his outcome all around him, like a dream. The film has its funny moments and also its unpleasant ones, one being where a man executes his little son for a minor offence, another being where a man assaults a blind man crossing the road. But the savage Buņuel humour is in evidence, where a man throws various objects out of a window, including a burning tree, a priest and a giraffe.
The primary assault, as per usual, is on the bourgeoisie, with a scene at a dinner party, where a maid is burning in the kitchen and a horse driven cart with peasants on trespasses through. All the guests are oblivious to this of course. It all concludes with a controversial religious scene, which was the main reason it was banned for so long. It is still an accomplished, sophisticated, expressive and artistically unlimited piece. A very creative and savaging Buņuel film.
"The story is also a sequence of moral and surrealist aesthetic. The sexual instinct and the sense of death form its substance." - Luis Buņuel
"In some way the juxtaposition of images causes in almost every spectator a train of reactions of unprecedented violence." - Basil Wright
"It retains its outrageous anarchic vitality, as though unwilling to admit its age." - Observer
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
