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L'Age D'Or (1930, Fr.) (aka
The Age of Gold, or The Golden Age)
In Buñuel's follow-up surrealistic feature film
to the previous year's short Un Chien Andalou (1929) - a disjointed
historically-significant film (co-scripted by Salvador Dali) ---
it was denounced by the Roman Catholic Church (for a blasphemous
castle orgy scene involving a Jesus Christ look-alike rapist in the
film's ending). It was also censored or banned by a few governments,
impounded in some cases, sparked riots in theaters, and was considered
controversial (pornographic and offensive):
- the plot: two passionate yet frustrated lovers,
a Man (Gaston Modot) and Young Girl (Lya Lys), were being kept
from one another and repressed by the pious bourgeois establishment
(and their families and society in general) for fear of them having
sex together
- the opening documentary sequence was on the topic
of scorpions, a contrast to human behavior
- the film featured indelible images of lovers in wet
beach-mud attempting to make love to each other but the two were
interrupted by Catholic dignitaries; and the sight of the sexually-frustrated
young woman performing fellatio on the toes of a religious marble
statue in a garden
- other surrealistic images: mitred arch-bishops
turning skeletal while perched on coastal rocks, a milking cow then
standing in a young woman's bed, a cart driven by a horse through
an elegant drawing room, and some acts of violence (a dog kicked,
a beetle stomped and squished on rocks, a blind man pushed down with
a foot to his stomach, a foot crushing a violin on pavement, a slap
in the face to a girlfriend's mother, and a shooting after a theft),
and most surprisingly, a burning tree, a priest or bishop, a huge
wooden plow, the bishop's staff, a giraffe statue, and pillow feathers
thrown out a window
Skeletal Arch-Bishops on Coastal Rocks
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Milking Cow on Bed
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- in the heretical ending, long-bearded and white-robed
Duke of Blangis (Lionel Salem), a Jesus look-alike, raped a young
woman in a castle, then emerged near a crucifix adorned with five
female scalps blowing in the wind
Duke of Blangis and Crucifix with Female Scalps
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Scorpion Documentary
Amorous Lovers in Wet Beach-Mud
Sucking Statue's Toes
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