L'Âge d'or

A couple grappling on the sand are pulled apart. For the next hour the man tries to reach the woman. In between there is a documentary passage about scorpions, bishops seated on rocks, a reception, an orchestra, and finally an ending straight out of Sade's 120 Days. There is deliberately no plot. The film is not interested in love. It is interested in desire colliding with institutions: church, family, state and polite society come into play one after another, and each time they keep two people from touching. For that it uses the logic of collision rather than realism. The form is surrealist: made in the first years of sound, with scenes that appear unconnected, abrupt cuts and a refusal of straight narration. Luis Buñuel directed and wrote it with Salvador Dalí, though the pair fell out before shooting. Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles financed the production. At a screening at Studio 28 on 3 December 1930, right-wing groups stormed the auditorium, threw ink at the screen, attacked the audience and slashed the surrealist paintings in the foyer. After a press campaign and diplomatic complaints the film was effectively banned and circulated only underground for some fifty years. Who it is for: viewers curious about surrealism and the scandals of film history. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a story. The film resists meaning, and some of the provocation has lost its force by now.