L’Âge d’or

Year: 1930
Director: Luis Buñuel
Original script: Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí
Producer: Viscount Charles de Noailles
Length: 63 min.

In 1929, when Buñuel was in Figueres to work on the script of L'Âge d'or, he witnessed the heated argument between Dalí and his father, which ended with the painter being told to get out of the family home. As a result, Dalí and Buñuel went to Cadaqués, where they stayed from 29 November until 6 December, putting the finishing touches to the script for the film, the title of which at that stage was La Bête andalouse. Dalí worked in close collaboration with Buñuel until shooting commenced at the beginning of March 1930, as shown by various notes in Buñuel's hand on the script and by their correspondence.

On 22 October 1930, Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles put on a private screening of L'Âge d'or in the Cinéma du Panthéon in Paris, five weeks before the film had its public premiere at Studio 28, on 28 November. A few days later, the films controversial content led members of the Ligue des Patriots and the anti-Jewish Ligue to interrupt screenings of L'Âge d'or by throwing ink at the screen and destroying works by Surrealist artists, including Dalí, displayed in the foyer of the cinema for the opening. On the back of this scandal, a press campaign in Le Figaro and L'Echo de Paris, among other papers, called for the banning of the film, and further showings were prohibited on 10 December.

According to a statement by Buñuel published in the Heraldo de Aragón in July 1930, this film is 'a moral scandal, which will consist in revolutionizing the bad habits of a society in open conflict with nature'. In effect, L'Âge d'or embodies the director's critique of the dominant values ​​of the society of the time: the nation, the family, religion and social conventions.