L’age d’or

Introduction by Albert Serra

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí followed up their seminal first collaboration, the short Un chien andalou, with this equally bold, unforgettable surrealist masterpiece, which they co-wrote.  In L’age d’or, a documentary about scorpions gives way to a series of seemingly disconnected, absurdist scenarios and Freudian symbols—a young couple writhing in the mud near a religious ceremony, a woman fellating the toe of a statue—adding up to an acridly funny picture of the hypocrisies of modern bourgeois life. Months after its premiere, right-wing groups rioted against the film, leading to its being banned in France until the eighties. L’age d’or eventually came to be seen as an essential modernist work, and this incredible new 4K restoration by the Cinémathèque française and Centre Pompidou (MNAM-CCI expérimental cinema department) has brought its image and sound back to brilliant life. Special thanks to Pathé and Maison de Champagne Piper-Heidsieck.