L'Âge d'Or
Theatrical poster of L'Âge d'Or
Directed by	Luis Buñuel
Produced by	Vicomte Charles de Noailles Marie-Laure de Noailles
Written by	Luis Buñuel Salvador Dalí
Starring	Gaston Modot Lya Lys Caridad de Laberdesque Max Ernst Josep Llorens Artigas Lionel Salem Germaine Noizet Duchange
Music by	Luis Buñuel Georges van Parys Richard Wagner Felix Mendelssohn W. A. Mozart Claude Debussy Ludwig van Beethoven Franz Schubert
Distributed by	Corinth Films (1979 U.S. release)
Release date(s)	29 November 1930 1 November 1979 (U.S.)
Running time	63 minutes
Language	French
Budget	1 million francs

L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age) is a 1930 surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.

The film cost a million francs to produce and was financed by the nobleman Vicomte Charles de Noailles, who beginning in 1928 commissioned a film every year for the birthday of his wife Marie-Laure de Noailles. When it was first released, there was a storm of protest. The film premiered at Studio 28 in Paris on 29 November 1930 after receiving its permit from the Board of Censors. In order to get the permit, Buñuel had to present the film to the Board as the dream of a madman.

On 3 December 1930, a group of incensed members of the fascist League of Patriots threw ink at the screen, assaulted members of the audience, and destroyed art works by Dalí, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and others on display in the lobby. On 10 December, the Prefect of Police of Paris, Jean Chiappe, arranged to have the film banned after the Board of Censors reviewed the film. A contemporary Spanish newspaper condemned the film as “...the most repulsive corruption of our age... the new poison which judaism, masonry, and rabid, revolutionary sectarianism want to use in order to corrupt the people.”^[1] The Noailles family pulled the film from distribution for nearly 50 years. In 1933, it was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, but the film did not have its official United States premiere until 1-15 November 1979 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco.

[edit] Summary

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general. In one notable scene, the young girl passionately fellates the toe of a religious statue.

In the final vignette, the place card narration tells of an orgy of 120 days of depraved acts (a reference to the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom) and tells us that the survivors of the orgy are ready to emerge. From the door of a castle emerges the Duc de Blangis, who strongly resembles Christ, with his long robes and beard. When a young girl runs out of the castle, the Duc comforts the girl, before taking her back into the castle. A scream is heard and the Duc emerges again, his beard mysteriously vanished. The film suddenly cuts to its final image, with the scalps of the women flapping in the wind on a crucifix, accompanied by jovial music. It has been suggested that this, along with scenes of violent expression earlier in the film as the lovestruck protagonist is manhandled along by two enforcers, may suggest that the film's message is that sexual repression, whether propagated by civil bourgeois society or by the church, breeds violence^[2]. This scene is alluded to in the opening sequence, which is an excerpt from a short science film about a scorpion. There we are informed that the Scorpion has five prismatic articulations, culminating in a sting.

[edit] Cast

• Gaston Modot as The Man
• Lya Lys as the Young Girl
• Caridad de Laberdesque as a Chambermaid and Little Girl
• Max Ernst as the Leader of men in cottage
• Josep Llorens Artigas (Governor)
• Lionel Salem as Duke of Blangis
• Germaine Noizet as Marquise
• Duchange as Conductor

The film's illustrations were created by Luis Ortiz Rosales.

[edit] References

1. ^ Quoted in C.B. Morris, This Loving Darkness: The Cinema and Spanish Writers 1920-1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1980), 28-9.
2. ^ L'Âge d'Or commentary by Robert Short, published by British Film Institute (BFI) Video

[edit] External links

• L'âge d'or at the Internet Movie Database
• L'Âge d'Or at Allmovie
• L'Âge d'or at Rotten Tomatoes

v • d • e Salvador Dalí List of works Selected paintings Landscape Near Figueras (1910) • Vilabertrin (1913) • Fiesta in Figueres (1914-16) • Port of Cadaqués (Night) (1918-19) • The Artist's Father at Llane Beach (1920) • The Garden of Llaner (Cadaqués) (1920-21) • Cabaret Scene (1922) • Cubist Self-Portrait with "La Publicitat" (1923) • Self-portrait with L'Humanitie (1923) • Portrait of Luis Buñuel (1924) • Siphon and Small Bottle of Rum (1924) • The Basket of Bread (1926) • Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood (1927) • The Lugubrious Game (1929) • The First Days of Spring (1929) • The Great Masturbator (1929) • The Persistence of Memory (1931) • The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table (1934) • Morphological Echo (1934-36) • Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus (1935) • Autumn Cannibalism (1936) • Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) • The Burning Giraffe (1937) • Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) • Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937) • Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938) • The Sublime Moment (1938) • Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939) • The Face of War (1940) • Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940) • Honey is Sweeter than Blood (1941) • Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944) • Galarina (1944-45) • Basket of Bread (1945) • The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1946) • The Elephants (1948) • Leda Atomica (1949) • The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949) • Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951) • Galatea of the Spheres (1952) • The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952-54) • Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954) • Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (1954)  • The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955) • Still Life Moving Fast (1956) • The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958-59) • Tuna Fishing (1966-1967) • The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968-1970) • La Toile Daligram (1972) • The Swallowtail (1983) • Other works Writings: L'Âge d'or (1930)  • Giraffes on Horseback Salad (1937)  • Libretto for Bacchanale (1939)  • Films: Un chien andalou (1929)  • Spellbound (1945, dream sequence) Animated Films: Destino (1946, 2003) Logos: Chupa Chups Opera: Être Dieu (1985) Sculpture: Lobster Telephone (1936)  • Mae West Lips Sofa (1937) Costumes: Costumes for Lorca's play Mariana Pineda (1927) Related articles Castle of Púbol • Dalí Universe • Espace Dalí • Dalí Theatre and Museum • Salvador Dalí Museum • Salvador Dalí (film) • Gala Dalí • Paranoiac-critical method