L'Age d'or. 1930. Directed by Luis Bunuel.

(11/23/00)

It is difficult to comment on this film as it was shown without English subtitles. From what I could tell it seemed like a 1930 version of a Monty Python comedy. Even though it has attained the status of a classic and of "art" I think it would be a mistake to take this film too seriously.

It starts off with scorpions. Then we see men who work or do something around the seashore. We see some bishops and later we see them as skeletons. People come to see them, but are interrupted by a man and a woman groping in the mud. Detectives escort the man to a city.

The best moment, I think, occurs at a party with well-dressed people. An elderly woman gets a man a drink, but spills some of it on his hand. He violently knocks her down. This savagery is repeated when a man shoots a little boy for some minor prank.

A man and a woman keep running into obstacles in their attempts to be alone together. They eventually find themselves alone and nibble on each other's fingers. The woman sucks and kisses the toes of a statue.

The ending is a parody of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. Degenerate aristocrats have holed themselves up in a chateau for 120 days of orgies. When they emerge one of them turns out to be Jesus Christ. That struck me as just juvenile. What is the point to it? It wasn't clever at all, just sophomoric. He goes back into the chateau with a young woman and we hear her scream. So what?