THE AGE OF GOLD
France, 1930
Original title: L’Âge d’Or
Story and Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí. Director of Photography: Albert Duverger. Editor: Luis Buñuel. Screenplay: Pierre Schildknecht. Music: Georges Van Parys. Cast and Characters: Lya Lys (the woman), Gaston Modot (the man), Max Ernst (bandit leader), Pierre Prévert (Péman, the bandit), Caridad de Laberdesque (the chambermaid), Lionel Salem (Duke of Blangis), Germaine Noizet (Marchioness of X), Bonaventura Ibáñez (Marquis of X), Josep Llorens Artigas (the governor). Production: Charles de Noailles, Marie-Laure de Noailles. Length: 75’
Format: DCP. Source and under licence from: Cinémathèque française.
Original version. Subtitles: English.
Restored by Cinémathèque française, Centre Pompidou and MNAM-CCI/Service du cinéma expérimental with the support of Pathé and Maison de Champagne Piper-Heidsieck at the Hiventy (image) workshop and L.E. Diapason (sound).
The surrealist narrative of a man and a woman who are passionately in love with each other. However their attempts to consummate their passion are repeatedly blocked by their families, the Church and bourgeois society.
“Dali was right to observe, with some self-satisfaction, that it looked like a Hollywood movie: you have Jesus Christ and ancient Rome, bishops, governors and government ministers, lovers and criminals. His landscape is the entire world: the sea and the snow-covered mountains, the desert and the city, cathedrals and palaces. While this already makes The Golden Age one of the great Buñuel films, it is also his last surrealist work, at least in the strict, militant sense: a film that does not fit in any genre or follow any conventions, civil law or morality […] Surrealism permeates it at every level, starting with the rich series of paradoxical associations and absurdist images. It is a veritable illustrated surrealist catalogue, although perhaps all the things that get thrown out of the window (including a bishop, a giraffe and a burning tree) point to the waning of the movement.”
(Alberto Farassino)
In collaboration with Cinémathèque Française
This film has been restored by La Cinémathèque française.
Saturday 2 April 2022, h. 6:00pm
