IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021577/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,6
Director: Luis Bunuel
Main Cast: Gaston Modot, Lya Lys
"L'age d'or was director Luis Buñuel's first feature, and was produced by the Vicomte Charles de Noailles, wealthy friend to the surrealist group. It was intended as a satire on the European bourgeoisie, and while de Noailles could have easily included himself among their number, he secretly detested them. In a sense, L'age d'or is as much de Noailles' statement as it is Buñuel's. The satire is so pointed that it borders on outright comedy, and in 1933 de Noailles and Buñuel did re-edit the film down into a two-reel comedy entitled In the Icy Wastes of Dialectical Materialism, which was distributed to left-wing theaters in Eastern Europe and Russia. Sadly, this short version has not survived. Anti-Semitic right-wingers staged a riot at the Paris premiere of L'age d'or, thinking Buñuel was Jewish. While their own organization, the League of Patriots, condemned the riot, the action did open a dialogue among French conservatives that L'age d'or was too anti-clerical, and the paper Le Figaro began to pressure the censorship board to withdraw the film's certificate. It did so on December 1, 1930.
Only three prints of the film were struck initially, and two of these were seized by authorities and destroyed. The Vicomte de Noailles hid the negatives of L'age d'or in a Paris bookshop of which he was part-owner. In 1933, a few more prints were struck, and one of these was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that same year. Buñuel claimed the notoriety of L'age d'or made it difficult for him to work in the 1930s and '40s.
Now that it has been generally available for awhile, it is easy to see that L'age d'or is technically the most accomplished of the early surrealist films. It has nothing of the brutish intensity of Un chien Andalou, nor the strange, otherworldliness of Le sang d'un poete. But it is by far the most successful of the de Noailles films in terms of progressing from scene to scene in an illogical/logical surrealist dream state, and the impact of the satire can be felt in comedies made 40 to 50 years down the line, particularly in the work of Monty Python's Flying Circus. While the beginning and end sequences of L'age d'or may feel slow, the main part of the film has lost little of its power, and is still highly amusing and mildly shocking, even today." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/lage-dor-v27795
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