MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: L’AGE D’OR (1930)

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Sunday, March 29, 2026

L’AGE D’OR (1930)

By now, the main shock in Luis Buñuel’s early surrealist film is how unshocking it is. Or rather, that its shocks need explanation. Like a joke that needs to be explained; not a good sign. (If you can watch with a commentary track, I’d give it a shot.) Coming on the heels of UN CHIEN ANDALOU/’29, which does still shock, Salvador Dalí again collaborates, though apparently with less input. Upon a line-up of nearly random topics, chosen to rile the easily offended (Politics, Religion, Social Mores; something for everyone!), the thru-line over an hour’s running time (three times the length of CHIEN) settles on frustration, a Buñuelian idée fixe, here unconsummated love. Custom & propriety interrupting one couple as they dry hump to Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde, ‘make love’ in a tree garden, and as a footman announces a visit by the interior minister with the man leaving the woman to suck on the marble nipples of a classical statue. Chilling; make that, chilly. The suggestion of coitus interruptus pointing directly ahead to those guests in THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL/’61 unable to leave a drawing room, or the meal no one can get to in the masterful DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE/’72, both looking as vital & essential as L'AGE now looks merely historic.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above EXTERMINATING ANGEL and/or DISCREET CHARM. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/exterminating-angel-1961.html

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Sunday, March 29, 2026

L’AGE D’OR (1930)

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