Age D'Or, L'

Although the name of Bunuel's collaborator on his previous film Un Chien Andalou, Salvador Dali, appears in the credits as writer, it is no secret that the painter's contribution was nominal and that this is Bunuel's film (apparently Dali departed after one day on the set due to a falling out between he and Bunuel over the latter's relationship with Gala). Bunuel's anti-clerical, anti-bourgeois preoccupations which he would methodically explore in his subsequent output are spelled out here in this art-cinema and Surrealist classic which originally began life as as a documentary about the habits of scorpions. The film which was financed by the Vicomte De Noailles who also put money into Un Chien Andalou, is more narratively coherent than the latter but that is not saying much. Today more of a historical artefact than the scandalous success it was in its time.

 

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