The Golden age
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Golden age |
| Original title | L'Âge d'Or |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1930 |
| length | 60 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Luis Buñuel |
| script | Luis Buñuel , Salvador Dalí |
| production | Le Vicomte de Noailles |
| occupation | |
| |
The golden age (original title: L'Âge d'Or ) is a surrealist sound film by the director Luis Buñuel from 1930.
content
The film begins with documentary footage of scorpions. After the subtitle "A few hours later ..." a robber climbs on a rock. He sees four bishops sitting on a reef mumbling prayers. Then he continues into a hut where other robbers are waiting. Some fragments of conversation can be heard ("You have ... accordions, hippos and brushes"). The group goes to the rocks, but one robber after the other collapses on the way and remains lying.
In the following scene you can see a lot of people, including commoners, priests, military men, who reach the shore in boats. You go to the rock where the clergy were sitting earlier and see that there are only skeletons left of them. The foundation stone of the eternal city of Rome is laid. But the ceremony is interrupted. On the edge of the action, a man and a woman begin to wallow in the mud in lovemaking. They are forcibly separated and the lover is arrested by two men. The arrested man is extremely irritable when he is arrested, kicks a dog and a beggar and crushes insects. The laying of the foundation stone is finished and Rome is built. There are aerial photographs of Rome and the Vatican. Various absurd city scenes are shown:
With his two guards, the man finally arrives in a town. To get rid of the guards, he shows them a certificate that identifies him as a representative of the “Society of Good Will”. His first act, released by the guards, was to kick a blind man on the other side of the street. Then he takes a taxi to a party where he sees his lover again. A pull cart with drunk farmers driving right through the action doesn't seem to attract anyone's attention. Previously, the lover had shooed a cow lying on her bed out of her bedroom. Before the man can meet his lover, he is involved in a conversation by her mother. Then you see a servant shooting his son in the courtyard, because he stole the tobacco from his pipe. The high society just looks on with slight indignation. Society is also not interested in a fire in the kitchen. When, however, the man slaps his lover's mother in the face because she accidentally spilled his drink, the whole evening party is indignant. She throws him out and takes care of the mother as if she were seriously injured.
At night, during a concert at which a priest also plays the violin, the lovers come together the next time. But this time, too, they cannot love each other, keep slipping off the chair and failing to hug. Suddenly the man is called to a phone call with the interior minister. He rages with rage and argues on the phone with the minister, who shoots himself. The corpse is not on the floor, but sticks to the ceiling as if gravity had been reversed. After the phone call the man comes back. The couple are hugging. Finally the woman says: “How nice that we murdered our children” and strokes her partner's face, which is suddenly smeared with blood. He answers "My love ... my love" a few times. The conductor suddenly seems to be suffering from a severe headache, stumbles off the stage and stumbles through the garden until he meets the two lovers. The woman jumps up, hugs and kisses the conductor. Her lover jumps up angrily, bumps his head on a hanging flower pot and suffers from a headache in turn. He stumbles back into the house through the garden. In the next scene the lover lies alone in bed and destroys the pillows. With feathers in his hands he goes to the window, opens it and throws out a burning tree, a bishop, a plow and a giraffe one after the other. Finally he lets the feathers slide out of his hands. Her lover jumps up angrily, bumps his head on a hanging flower pot and suffers from a headache in turn. He stumbles back into the house through the garden. In the next scene the lover lies alone in bed and destroys the pillows. With feathers in his hands he goes to the window, opens it and throws out a burning tree, a bishop, a plow and a giraffe one after the other. Finally he lets the feathers slide out of his hands. Her lover jumps up angrily, bumps his head on a hanging flower pot and suffers from a headache in turn. He stumbles back into the house through the garden. In the next scene the lover lies alone in bed and destroys the pillows. With feathers in his hands he goes to the window, opens it and throws out a burning tree, a bishop, a plow and a giraffe one after the other. Finally he lets the feathers slide out of his hands.
At the end of the film, a text board explains that four fundamentally evil men held a forty-day orgy in a castle, in which eight women died (an allusion to The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade ). The first of four people to leave the house is Jesus, who in the film, analogous to a main character in the book, is the Duke of Blangisreferred to as. After him, three noble people step out the door. A woman crawls behind, covered in blood, whereupon Jesus goes back and pulls her back inside. After a woman screams, the door can be seen opening again and the duke comes out again, but this time without a beard. The last shot of the film shows a cross to which the scalps of the girls murdered during the orgy are nailed.
statement
Buñuel criticizes civil society and Christian morality in his films. He doesn't just want to improve what already exists, he wants something completely different. He once said: “For me, bourgeois morality is immorality that must be combated; this morality, which is based on our extremely unjust social institutions such as religion, fatherland, family, culture, whatever is called the pillars of society. "
Performances
The film premiered in "Studio 28", where it was shown six times in a row in front of sold-out stands. On December 3, 1930, a showing of the film was interrupted by right-wing extremists of the " Action française ", who devastated the cinema, threw ink on the screen and destroyed an exhibition of surrealistic images. On December 10, the film was banned from showing, which was not lifted until 1981.
miscellaneous
- The film was one of the first French sound films.
- The producer Vicomte de Noailles later converted to Catholicism and took the film out of distribution as a blasphemy.
Reviews
“In accordance with surrealist ideology, only love, wild, anarchist, irrational love is acceptable. Everything else is subject to ridicule: the rich, the church, the state, the army, as well as the typical bourgeois vices, which are called sentimentality and romanticism and which Buñuel detested all his life. "
“'The Golden Age' is certainly one of the most provocative and uncompromising films that has ever been made. And Buñuel has remained true to himself "
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.foerderverein-filmkultur.de/innovatives-erzahlen-vorschau/
- ↑ Michael Schwarze: Buñuel . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1981, ISBN 3-499-50292-5 , p. 65; quoted after Elena Poniotowska: Luis Buñuel. A documentation , p. A 74
- ↑ a b Amos Vogel: "Film as subversive art", Hannibal Verlag, St. Andrä-Wierter, 1997, p. 286
- ↑ Review on filmzentrale.com