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Title: L'Age D'or by Paul Hammond, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali ISBN: 0-85170-642-8 Publisher: British Film Inst Pub. Date: March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Book On Murdering (possible spoilers)
Comment: The murdering performed in L'age D'or is definitely rendered aesthetically in many forms. Among other forms, one could also dispute that L'age D'or attacks Freudian based ideas, which are depicted and utilized in the film with derision
Freudian theories were prominent during the reign of Surrealism. Andre Breton had become a leading student in the field of psychology, soon establishing Freudian ideals in the Surrealist manifesto. Among the psychological symbols presented in L'age D'or are: displacement of a phallus for Apollo's big toe, images of rod shaped objects hitting water, an anal-expulsive scene set in a lover's fantasy, a woman with a bandage on her finger, and a hand recklessly polishing bottles and kitchen utensils.
It is apparent that L'age D'or has represented Luis Bunuel's anti-clerical sentiments. In addition, the film rejects the notion of diplomacy for purposely shocking the viewer and offending those who cherish the concept of class society.
The film's structure is very fragmented but still possesses a linear narrative format. In this manner Bunuel had relinquished previous conventions to filmmaking and doubly attacks structure and the viewers preconceived principles for watching a film.
In L'ge D'or (or simply The Golden Age) Bunuel presents a tale of two lovers whose romantic sentiments and erotic activities are being thwarted by middle-class values and ideologies. In his autobiography, Bunuel described the lovers conflict as a l'amour fou, or an "impossible force that brings two people together and the subsequent impossibility of them ever becoming one."
Subsequently, the two lovers begin to share their emotions in bizarre ways: tumbling on chairs, biting fingers and toes, sucking profusely on inanimate objects.However, the turning point of the film presents the jealousy of the protagonist, when his amorist falls in love with a middle-class conductor. Thus L'age D'or then vociferates a cataclysm of emotions and subconscious imagery.
... Although incomprehensible to a majority, the climax of the film is intentionally ambiguous but metaphorically is another one of Bunuel scathing assault on organized religion.
Salvador Dali has proffered the idea that the images of Surrealism will set an abominable precedent on the ways we view reality. Likened to Dada, Surrealism had attacked the conventions of art by presenting nihilistic ideas to an audience accustomed with Fauvism and Cubist banalities.
Likewise, Surrealist artists have deconstructed the principles of art by exhibiting in their mediums the worlds of absurdism and the unconscious mind. By these aesthetic practices, our judgments of reality have been considerably altered and have now taken a new standpoint.
As a supplement to Dali's statement, Bunuel described Surrealist cinema as "a passionate call to murder." In relation to Bunuel's quotation, it is ostensible that the murdering performed in L'age D'or is directed at the hierocratic doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and bourgeois values.
Bunuel had expressed his ambivalence for religious conviction by stating "Thank God I'm an atheist." By the same token, the film L'age D'or affirms a deep-seated indifference as well as an utter indignation for Roman Catholic dogma.
During the critical point of the film, Bunuel establishes his protagonist development where after being rejected by his would be lover, the character begins to ravish an immaculately set bedroom belonging to a bourgeois resident. Subsequently, the hero (or antihero) purposely deposits cherished objects out of the window.
Among these items are: an accumulation of pillow feathers, a christmas tree that is set ablaze, a live Roman Catholic bishop in full regalia, and a stuffed giraffe.
Among the aforementioned discarded objects, Bunuel clearly exemplifies his religious opinion most notably with the discarding of the Catholic bishop. In addition, one may argue that what the protagonist is doing is presumably related to Bunuel's own wish: a purging of oppressive theological icons.
In addition, one could say that the film is murdering the audience or viewer by displaying surrealistic pessimism and confounding imagery. Moreover, wide populations of viewers were doubly offended by the film blasphemous and utterly absurd ideas.
During the film's premier, a nationalistic Catholic organization known as The King's Henchman (who belonged to the Action Française of France) proceeded to throw bottles of ink and jars of acid onto the screen. This incident was precipitated due to the fact that L'age D'or presented a sequence where a religious sacrament was juxtaposed with a beautiful woman's leg.
But is this still shocking? Apparently not by today's standards
After leaving the screening, the group bombarded the theater's adjacent gallery and deliberately ruined the paintings of some renowned Surrealist artist, most notably Max Ernst, whose canvas bore huge slashes in it.
By this example, L'age D'or had an utmost affect on its audience, eventually becoming censored in several countries for several years ---even to this day it is rare to see a screening of this film.
In short, a Surrealist film like L'age D'or may shock or appall audiences with its use of absurd and blasphemous sequences and subject matter. Nevertheless, one can also acquire a new perspective on the societal values and class systems presented in the film.
Rating: 4
Summary: Enlightening and playful diegesis of a provocative classic.
Comment: When 'L'Age D'Or' was released in 1930, the few mainstream cinemas equipped with sound refused to show it. Its exhibition in a small art-house sparked vicious vandalism from right-wing groups; under pressure from the Parisian Chief of Police, the film was withdrawn and remained unseen for 50 years except for poor pirate copies. Raucously erotic, politically satirical and provocatively sacreligious, it is easy to see even today how this Surrealist masterpiece caused so much offence - laced with imagery sublimating onanism, famous scenes include the putrefaction of four bishops on a Mallorcan cliff-top; repeatedly frustrated erotic trysts; the gratuitous kicking of a dog and a blind war veteran; the cold-blooded shooting of a young boy by his father; a restaging of de Sade's infamous novel '120 Days of Sodom', with the murderous libertine Blangis played by Christ; and a crucifix nailed with women's scalps.
Paul Hammond's monograph is an indispensable gloss on this dense, allusive, but hilarious film. Although imbued with a Surrealist aesthetic - with creative input from the movement; cameos by Max Ernst, Paul Eluard and Velentine Penrose; the visual influence of Magritte and the narrative disruptions of Peret - Hammond shows how 'L'Age D'or' fundamentally engages with Bunuel's love for Hollywood, in particular the slapstick of Keaton and Langdon, the social comedies of Lubitsch and Stroheim, and the amour fou melodramas of Borzage, which he reworked, burlesqued and homaged (Bunuel despised the 'avant-garde' or 'art' film). He reinstates the important creative contribution of now-despised co-scenarist Salvador Dali, who provided many of the film's best gags and its running imagery, as well as its 'critical-paranoid' methodology - the pair's aim was to show 'reality's adjustment to the unconscious'. He brilliantly traces the film's equally remarkable production, and how its crises shaped 'L'Age D'Or''s aesthetic (for instance, unusable footage led Bunuel to use stock scientific film for the famous opening 'documentary' scorpion sequence). He explains the political, sexual and Freudian allusions scattered throughout, as well as the many in-jokes - much of the imagery is generated from word-play. His recreation of the amazing cultural milieu of which the film was a part, a Parisian world of intense culture, politics, sexuality, friendship and comically bourgeois family problems.
Although his tracing of the film is linear, Hammond rejects systematic analysis in favour of a 'delire d'interpretation', picking up clues from the imagery, film-making or background and wending many fascinating and original interpretive avenues. The reader should be warned however: Hammond assumes a lot of prior knowledge (you are expected to know who Peret and Brunius were, or what happened at the Saint-Pol-Roux dinner); while sentences such as the following are not uncommon: 'As well as functioning oneirically, 'L'Age D'Or' is a fine example of Shklovskian retardation'; 'In the end he toned down the galimatias, although the diegetic effect remains dyslexic'. Best have a dictionary and google handy!
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