L'age Dor (Bunuel, 1930)
L'age Dor is a film that fell out of the TSPDT top 100 in the last update that I decided to swap for On The Waterfront, which entered the TSPDT top 100 in the last update, because I didn't feel like spending any money to see it again.
L'age Dor is a good film to test your pretentious friends with. Here's the experiment. You pick a theme out of a hat, then you tell your friends that is what the film is about. Then you show them the film. If they tell you you're right, that's what the film is about: They're pretentious liars who don't want to admit to you they'd rather be watching superhero movies.
I don't know how to explain half the scenes in it. The movie is so surrealist it makes Eraserhead look like Paul Blart: Mallcop. What themes I do understand in it I only do because they're similar to themes in other Bunuel films Viridiana and Belle de Jour. There's the theme of id versus superego. The main part of the movie takes place at this rich party where rich people behave puritanically. This guy comes in who acts completely on impulse. She sneaks off with him because she wants to explore said impulses, then decides she'd rather not leave her puritanical world. The guy then gets mad so he throws the pope out the window. Then Jesus rapes schoolgirls. (I wonder how Bunuel feels about Catholicism?)
L'age Dor was so much more openly sexual than the other films of its time that it was censored for fifty years. Maybe that's part of the reason the film has such a cult following. People who are against censorship tend to assume anything that is censored is automatically awesome, and people who hate the mainstream assume anything confusing must be brilliant.
Rating: *** / 5
I've gotten through ten films in nineteen days, way ahead of the pace I need to finish this thing. I won't keep up the one movie per two days pace, because my spring classes are starting soon. Hopefully I can use the next week to get far enough ahead that I won't fall way behind during the semester.
Next: Metropolis
10/100
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