PRESENTS
L’AGE D’OR
A FILM BY
LUIS BUÑUEL
Pressbook compiled by Elliott Stein
Press Contact: Rodrigo Brandão at Kino International
(212) 629-6880 or rbrandao@kino.com
PRESSBOOK
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L'AGE D'OR
CREW
Director --Luis Buñuel
Scenario --Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali
Shooting script-- Luis Buñuel
Assistant directors-- Jacques-Bernard Brunius and Claude Heymann
Editor --Luis Buñuel
Director of Photograpny -- Albert Duverger
Set Designer -- Pierre Schildknecht
Producers -- The Vicomte Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles
CAST
Gaston Modot --The man, the honorable Mr. X
Lya Lys --The woman, daughter of the Marquise of X
Germaine Noizet -- The Marquess of X
Bonaventura Ibanez -- The Marquis of X
Lionel Salem -- The duc de Blangis/Jesus Christ
Max Ernst -- The leader of the bandits
Pierre Prevert -- Bandit in bed
Jean Aurenche, Joaquin Roga -- Other bandits
Valentine Penrose -- Woman in car
Marie-Berthe Ernst, Roland Penrose -- Guests at the concert
Paul Eluard --Voice-over during the garden love-making scene.
Shot at Studios de Billancourt, Studios de laTobis, Epinay-sur-Seine; on location in
Cap de Creus, Costa Brava, Spain and in France at Montmorency and Paris.
Musical extracts include Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture; Beethoven's 5th Symphony;
the Death of Isolde from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde; the Good Friday Drums of
Calanda played by drummers of the Republican Guard.
French commercial release: November 28, 1930 at the Studio 28, Paris
Date of banning by the Prefecture of Police: December 10, 1930
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L'AGE D'OR
SYNOPSIS
The plot of L'age d'Or is remarkably simple: two lovers (Gaston Modot and Lya Lys)
declare war on a bourgeois French society intent on thwarting the fulfillment of their
desires. Although the actions of the frustrated lovers are central, the film goes off in all
sorts of directions. Indeed, it opens with documentary footage of scorpions. (In a sense,
the film itself may be seen as a scorpion, for its sting, like the razor at the beginning of
Un Chien Andalou, threatens our complacent acceptance of the world we live in.) This
leads into incidents on a rocky seashore, where a gang of bandits (led by Surrealist
painter Max Ernst) are invaded first by a group of chanting bishops and then dignitaries who "have come to found the Roman empire." The film ends with a sequence of a
cross bedecked with scalps, covered with snow, blowing in the wind, to the tune of a
paso doble.
However, a desciption of the bare bones of the plot will give but little idea of the visual
poetry of this landmark of world cinema, since, as put by Henry Miller, a huge admirer
of Buñuel and the film, "L'Age d'Or is composed of a succession of images without
sequence, the significance of which must be sought below thethreshold of consciousness."
Here is the complete text of Buñuel's own synopsis of the film, written in French, in
1930: "Scorpions live in the rocks. Having climbed atop one of these rocks, a bandit
sights a group of archbishops, who sing while seated in the mineral landscape. The
bandit hurries to announce to his friends the presence of the archbishops. When he
gets to his hut, he finds his companions in a strange state of weakness and depression.
They take up their weapons and leave, with the exception of the youngest, who cannot
even get up. They set out among the rocks, but one after the other they fall to the
ground, unable to go on. Then the leader of the bandits collapses without hope. From
where he lies, he hears the sea and sees the archbishops, who are now reduced to skeletons scattered among the stones.
"An enormous marine convoy comes ashore at this steep and desolate spot. The convoy
consists of priests, soldiers, nuns, ministers, and sundry civil servants. All head toward
the place where the remains of the archbishops lie. In imitation of the authorities leading the procession, the crowd takes off their hats.
"They have come to found imperial Rome. The first stone is being laid when piercing
cries draw everyone's attention. In the mud close by, a man and a woman struggle
amorously. They separate the two. They strike the man, and the police carry him off.
This man and woman will be the main characters of the film.
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L'AGE D'OR
“Thanks to a document that reveals his high status and the important humanitarian
and patriotic mission entrusted to him by the government, the man is soon set free.
From that moment on, all his efforts are directed toward Love. In the course of an
unrealized love scene, characterized by the violence of its abortive acts, the protagonist
is called on the telephone by the important person who had put him in charge of the
humanitarian mission in question. This minister denounces him. Because he has abandoned his task, thousands of old people and innocent children have perished. The
film's protagonist greets this accusation with insults, and without listening further,
returns to his beloved's side just as a completely inexplicable accident succeeds in separating her from him even more definitively. Afterward we see him throw out the window a flaming fir tree, an enormous farm implement, an archbishop, a giraffe, some
feathers--all at the exact instant when the survivors from the chateau of Selligny cross
the snow-covered drawbridge. The Count of Blangis is clearly Jesus Christ. This final
episode is accompanied by a paso doble. We also see in this film, among other things, a
blind man being abused, a dog being crushed, a son nearly killed gratuitously by his
father, an old lady being slapped, etc."
Note: For those not in the know, Buñuel's synopsis does not make it clear why for
many spectators, the scene concerning the survivors from the chateau of Selligny was
the most scandalous and blasphemous of all--the final sting in the scorpion's tale. The
survivors are characters from Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom and its central character
is the murderous libertine of Sade's novel, the Duke of Blangis. Blangis has been the
leader of a bestial orgy in his medieval castle, involving "depraved women and magnificent adolescents." When he emerges, robed and bearded, his remarkable similarity to
Jesus Christ is evident. The sequence is a withering attack on a society which, in the
name of Christian morality, represses spontaneous feeling, and in so doing transforms
true sexual freedom into sadism.
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L'AGE D'OR
LUIS BUÑUEL
–BIOGRAPHY–
Buñuel (1900-1983) was born in the village of Calanda in Aragon, to an old local family
and was educated first at a Jesuit school where the repressive system of instruction,
unchanged since the 18th century, instilled in him a lifelong rebellion against religion.
He studied at the University of Madrid where he befriended his future collaborator
Salvador Dali and became a supporter of the anarchist movement. In 1925 he moved to
Paris, with no clear idea what he would do. When he saw Fritz Lang's Destiny, he realized where his vocation lay.
He entered films as an assistant to the renowned French director, Jean Epstein. Buñuel
and Dali then got together and during a three-day exchange of dreams and fantasies,
wrote a script for a film that they shot in 1928, consisting of a series of unrelated
images, the only unifying element being their power to shock. This extraordinary debut
film, Un Chien Andalou/An Andalusian Dog, represented the avant-garde at its most
mature, most surreal, and most Freudian and earned Buñuel entry into the Surrealist
group.
His friends put him in touch with a wealthy patron, the Vicomte de Noailles, and he
was soon given the money to make a second film. The result was his surrealist masterpiece, L'Age d'Or/ The Golden Age (1930), a savage assault on the establishment, the
church and middle-class morality. Its release precipitated a huge scandal. When ultrarightists attacked the theater where it was being shown, the authorities responded by
banning it.
Returning to Spain, in 1932 Buñuel made the documentary Las Hurdes/ Land without
Bread, the most explicitly militant of his films, which depicts the misery of the denizens
of one of Spain's poorest regions. It was, in turn, banned by the Spanish government.
He then acted as executive producer on a few films in Spain, returned to Paris after the
outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and in 1939 was invited to Hollywood as adviser on
a film about the Civil War. While in the US, he was hired by Iris Barry of New York's
Museum of Modern Art to work on various World War II related projects at the
Museum.
When a producer signed him up to make a film in Mexico, Buñuel entered the most
prolific phase of his career. Between 1947 and 1960, he worked constantly in the
Mexican studios. The results were uneven, but along with a few quickie melodramas,
he directed such masterpieces as Los Olvidados (1950), E1 (1952), The Criminal Life of
Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) and Nazarin (1958).
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L'AGE D'OR
LUIS BUÑUEL’S BIOGRAPHY
–Continued–
He became a Mexican citizen, and in 1961 was persuaded to embark on a SpanishMexican coproduction to be shot in Spain. Viridiana, one of his greatest works, was a
direct assault on the pillars of the Franco dictatorship and Spanish Catholicism and
was banned in Spain, although it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and secured long overdue international acclaim for its director.
After Viridiana, Buñuel worked mostly in France and continued to speak with one of
the boldest voices in world cinema. His later iconoclastic major works include The
Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Belle de Jour (1967), The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie (1972). Ironically, Luis Buñuel, the arch enemy of any kind of established
society, became one of the most respected and admired figures in the development of
motion pictures.
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L'AGE D'OR
LUIS BUÑUEL'S FILMOGRAPHY
DIRECTOR
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
Phantom of Liberty (1974)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Tristana (1970)
The Milky Way (1969)
Belle de Jour (1967)
Simon of the Desert (1965)
Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Viridiana (1961)
The Young One (1960)
The Republic of Sin (1959)
Nazarin (1959)
La Muerte en este Jardin (1956)
Cela s'appelle l'Aurore (1956)
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)
The River and Death (1954)
Illusion Travels by Streetcar (1953)
Wuthering Heights (1953)
El /This Strange Passion (1952)
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1952)
Mexican Bus Ride (1952)
Una Mujer Sin Amor (1951)
Susana (1951)
Los Olvidados (1950)
El Gran Calavera (1949)
Gran Casino (1947)
Land Without Bread (1932)
L'Age d'Or (1930)
Un Chien Andalou/An Andalusian Dog (1929)
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L'AGE D'OR
PRODUCTION NOTES
Among Paris's filthy rich set, Vicomte Charles and Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles
were the most celebrated couple of sophisticated patrons of the arts and friends of
Paris's Bohemia. Marie-Laure was distantly related to the Marquis de Sade; her mother
was the inspiration for Proust's Duchesse de Guermantes. Every year, starting in 1928,
Charles had commissioned a film as a birthday present for his wife. It was Noailles who
had financed Cocteau's ground-breaking Blood of a Poet. Noailles had admired Un
Chien Andalou and invited Buñuel to a dinner at his Paris mansion, where Cocteau and
Francis Poulenc were among the other guests. After dinner, Buñuel and Dali's first film
was screened and Noailles let Buñuel know that he would be interested in producing
his next film, "like Un Chien Andalou, but with a sound track."
Buñuel left for Spain to coax Dali into another collaboration. Later in Paris, Dali and
Buñuel worked on the script together, then Buñuel completed much of it by himself at
the Noailles chateau in the South of France. The final script seems closer to Buñuel
than to Dali--its theme, the obstacles which religion, as well as society, poseto the
attainment of love, has been seen by critics as a reflection of Buñuel's own attempts to
find sexual release in the teeth of his Jesuit upbringing.
Although L'Age d'Or had originally been conceived as a two-reel project, in the course
of production further "gags" were improvised and scenes were added, taking the movie
to an hour. Noailles approved the longer version. Various titles for the film had been
considered. Buñuel’s shooting script bears the title "The Andalusian Beast." It was
renamed after completion.
L'Age d'Or was partly shot at the Billancourt studios, which Buñuel found on arrival he
was sharing with Eisenstein, who working there on Romance Sentimentale. The scorpion footage comes from a 1912 documentary called Le Scorpion Languedocien; some
Pathe and Eclair newsreel footage is also used. Exterior location shooting was done in
Spain at Cabo Creus and in France at Montmorency and in Paris's 16th arrondissement. Buñuel set what was to be the style of a lifetime by shooting the film with extraordinary speed.
The film was first shown in a theater before an audience invited by the Noailles at the
Pantheon Cinema on October 22, 1930. Among the guests were Picasso, Gertrude
Stein, Andre Malraux, Andre Gide, Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy and other
art world celebrities.
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L'AGE D'OR
PRODUCTION NOTES
–Continued–
The French censorship board passed L'Age d'Or with the deletion of a single intertitle
and it was released theatrically at the Studio 28 on November 29, 1930, supported by
two shorts. An exhibition of paintings by Dali, Max Ernst, Miro and Man Ray was
mounted in the lobby.
On December 3, demonstrators from "The Patriotic Youth Group," an offshoot of "The
Anti-Semitic League," laid waste to Studio 28, setting off smoke bombs, throwing ink at
the screen, screaming "Death to the Jews!," beating members of the audience with
blackjacks and slashing the art works. Although the film had been passed by the censors, on December 5 the Prefect of Police demanded the cutting of the scene with the
bishops and following a protest from Mussolini's ambassador to France, the censor
board decided to have another look at it. On December 10, the film was banned by the
Paris Prefecture of Police. Jean Chiappe, the Prefect, was a rabid anti-Communist who
hated the fellow-travelling Surrealists. Ironically, he was also a movie buff and had
been screen-tested by Abel Gance for the role of Napoleon.
BIOGRAPHIES
SALVADOR DALI (co-script) (b. Figeuras, Spain 1904-d.1989) One of the most popular
painters of the 20th century, Dali was a true pioneer of the Surrealist movement. An
artist of astonishing technical virtuosity and a flamboyant self-publicist, using Freudian
ideas about dreams and madness he produced obsessional images in which detailed
reality is transformed into intricate and disturbing pictures. He and Buñuel became
acquainted during their student days in Madrid. It was Buñuel's idea that they should
collaborate on a Surrealist film. Un Chien Andalou, shot by Buñuel, is mostly based on
a treatment the two of them put together during several days of free association, telling
one another their most recent dreams and turning them into reality. Although Dali also
worked on L'Age d'Or, the extent of that contribution has often been a subject of
debate. In later years, Dali accused Buñuel of minimizing his work on both films. In
1945, Alfred Hitchcock called on Dali to design the dream sequence for his psychiatric
thriller, Spellbound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Although brief, Dali's
sequence is hauntingly provocative. Hitchcock chose him for this sequence because he
knew Un Chien Andalou--in its most famous shot, an eyeball is sliced with a razor; the
original script for Spellbound featured a man cutting painted eyes with a giant scissors.
There is a museum devoted to Dali's work in Figueras, his birthplace in Spain, and two
in the USA, in Cleveland, Ohio, and St. Petersburg, Plorida.
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L'AGE D'OR
BIOGRAPHIES
–Continued–
Crew
ALBERT DUVERGER (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY)
Active from 1919 to 1933, he was responsible for much of the splendid imagery of Abel
Gance's La Roue (1922); Jean Epstein's Mauprat (1926); La Sirene des Tropiques
(1927); Un Chien Andalou (1928). Buñuel met him while working as an assistant to
Epstein on Mauprat.
PIERRE SCHILDKNECHT also known as Schild (SET DESIGNER)
Born in Russia. He was responsible for the magnificent sets in Abel Gance's Napoleon
(1927); Un Chien Andalou (1928); Les Disparus de St.-Agil (1938); Camoens (1946).
Cast
GASTON MODOT - THE MAN, THE HONORABLE MR. X (b. 1887 Paris - d. 1970)
One of the great acting careers in French cinema. From 1910 to 1962 he appeared in an
extraordinary number of classic French films, often for major directors. A friend of
Picasso and Modigliani, Modot pursued a career as a painter in Montmartre before, in
1910, joining a troupe of acrobats who appeared in a number of Gaumont comedy
films, with gags supplied by him. He directed some shorts. His films include Rene
Clair's Sous les Toits de Paris (1930) and 14 Juillet (1933); and Julien Duvivier’s Pepe
le Moko (1937). A Communist, he became a fixture in Popular Front Cinema. One of
Jean Renoir's favorite actors, Modot appears in seven of that director's films, most
notably as the gamekeeper in Rules of the Game (1939). He can also be seen in Marcel
Carne's Children of Paradise (1945); Buñuel's Cela s'appelle l'Aurore (1956) and Louis
Malle's The Lovers (1958).
LYA LYS - THE WOMAN, THE DAUGHTER OF THE MARQUISE OF X (b. 1908,
Berlin, Germany - d. 1986 Newport Beach, California)
For his leading actress, Buñuel sought a Louise Brooks type, tested a number of women
and finally settled on the untried Lya Lys. She was Russian; her real name was Natalia
Lyech. The temperamental Lys and Buñuel apparently were lovers for a while during
production. MGM brought her to Hollywood to appear in European versions of its
films. After appearing in a few French versions for MGM (among others, opposite
Buster Keaton, in the French remake of Spite Marriage, she played supporting roles in
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), The Return of Doctor X (1939), opposite Humphrey
Bogart, and Murder in the Air (1940) opposite Ronald Reagan.
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L'AGE D'OR
BIOGRAPHIES
–Continued–
Cast
MAX ERNST - THE LEADER OF THE BANDITS (b. 1891, Bruhl, Germany, d. 1976,
Paris)
One of the leading surrealist artists, notable especially for his witty play with collage
where accident is used to liberate images in the subconscious that seem to be painted
dreams. In 1919 he was the leader of the Cologne Dada group, then settled in Paris in
1922 and joined the Surrealist movement. His "collage novels" are imaginative and
experimental. His third wife was Peggy Guggenheim. He contributed to Hans Richter's
1946 feature, Dreams That Money Can Buy, in which he recreates an image-sequence
from his collage novel, Une Semaine de Bonté, in live action terms.
PIERRE PREVERT - PEMAN, THE BANDIT IN BED (b. 1906, Paris - d. 1988, Paris)
The younger brother of France's greatest screenwriter, Jacques Prevert, he worked as
an assistant to Renoir, then collaborated with his brother on an excellent comedy,
L'Affaire est dans le Sac (1932) and directed two charming zany features, Adieu
Leonard (1943) and Voyage Surprise (1946).
PAUL ELUARD - VOICE OVER DURING THE GARDEN LOVE-MAKING SCENE (b.
1895, Saint Denis, France, d. 1952)
One of the greatest of French 20th century poets, he was a founder of the Surrealist
movement in literature. His works have been translated into English by Paul Auster
and Samuel Beckett, among others.
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L'AGE D'OR
QUOTES
"Buñuel is a filmmaker I have been stylistically haunted and influenced by for a very
long time. I am enthralled by this man. He remains my favorite voice of the surrealists."
- Gus Van Sant
"The Centre Pompidou feels especially fortunate to be able to participate in the celebrations that, throughout the world, are taking place in honor of the centennial of Luis
Buñuel's birth. Buñuel occupies a place of honor in the Centre Pompidou. This year, in
fact, for the first time in the history of the National Museum of Modern Art, an entire
room of the museum, chosen among those dedicated to Surrealism, will be devoted
entirely to a filmmaker, Luis Buñuel.
Almost impossible to see for nearly 50 years, and today universally recognized as one
of the great films in the history of cinema and the cornerstone of Buñuel's work, L'Age
d'Or (1930) is shown to visitors of the National Museum of Modern Art in a room specially prepared for the occasion. The film's negative, which was donated to the Museum
and restored in 1993, forms part of the Centre Pompidou's collection. To celebrate
Buñuel is, obviously to pay homage to one of the greatest filmmakers of the century
that has now come to an end. It is through Buñuel's immense work which in all reality
never abandoned surrealism that we recognize the importance of magic and dreams in
20th century culture."
--Jean-Jacques Aillagon, President, Centre Pompidou, Paris
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L'AGE D'OR
QUOTES
"Five or six years ago I had the rare good fortune to see L'Age d'Or, the film made by
Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, which created a riot at Studio 28. For the first time in
my life I had the impression that I was watching a film which was pure cinema and
nothing but cinema. Since then I am convinced that L'Age d'Or is unique and unparalleled...In L'Age D'Or we stand again at a miraculous frontier which opens up before us
a dazzling new world which no one has explored...Bunuel, like the miners of the
Asturias, is a man who flings dynamite. Bunuel is obsessed by the cruelty, ignorance
and superstition which prevail among men.
He realizes that there is no hope for man anywhere on this earth unless a clean slate be
made of it. He appears on the scene at the moment when civilization is at its nadir.
"They have called Bunuel everything--traitor, anarchist, pervert, defamer, iconoclast.
But lunatic they dare not call him. True, it is lunacy he portrays in his film, but it is not
of his making... Is it necessary to add that there are scenes in this film which have
never been dreamed of before?...It is the great virtue of Bunuel that he refuses to be
enmeshed in the glittering web of logic and idealism which seeks to mask from us the
real nature of man... I want to repeat: L'Age d'Or is the only film I know of which
reveals the possibilities of the cinema. It makes its appeal neither to the intellect nor to
the heart; it strikes at the solar plexus. It is like kicking a mad dog in the guts."
--Henry Miller, from The Cosmological Eye
"The humor, eroticism and dreamy cinematic invention of this legendary classic remain
as fresh and surprising as a cow sitting in the bedroom."
--Program note, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
Pressbook compiled by Elliott Stein
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