“L’Age d’Or” is a film so weird, depraved, bizarre and perverse that in 1934 it was withdrawn from circulation and not seen again for 65 years. When it was made, it had to be pitched as a madman’s dream to even get a screening, and that screening did not end well. Throughout its 63 minute run, audience members hurled purple paint at the screen and slashed paintings in the theater lobby by Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and other surrealists.
It was made by Luis Bunuel, the father of all surrealist cinema. He was making avant garde films before that was even a genre. His first film, arguably one of the most famous shorts of all time, “Un Chien Andalou,” was just a taste of a mischievous mind at work. In that film that he made with Salvador Dali, he showed a woman’s eye sliced open with a razor blade, a man with ants crawling out of his hand and more. People have analyzed that film for decades to no avail, because the film has no meaning. It’s only significance is that Bunuel imagined it and had the capacity to imagine more. Continue reading “Rapid Response: L’Age d’Or”