L’âge d’or (1930) – 1/5

Progressive of pointless? I say it’s the latter

„L’âge d’or“ or „The Golden Age“ or „The Age of Gold“ is a French French-language live action movie from 1930, so this one is easily over 90 years old now and the 100th anniversary is not really too far away anymore, maybe even much closer if it takes you a little longer to get here and read this review of mine. The year when this got made makes it a black-and-white film of course still and it is a sound movie and you will hear music and you will hear people talking, but especially the latter is not frequent at all. For example, the male protagonist is almost never talking here and same is true for the female protagonist, who has much less screen time. So yeah, you can definitely see that this film is stuck a bit in no man’s land between silent and sound films and not in a good way. But before I elaborate on this maybe a little more later on, we could also add that the quantity of intertitles was not sufficient for the action to be understood, let’s look at the basics first. The director and one of three writers credited here is Luis Buñuel and this is a very early career effort from him, one of his earliest. His writing body of work includes another full feature film of a similar duration, but in terms of directing, there is only short film work before this one here and also not a lot. The two other writers are really big names too. The first would be Salvador Dalí and everybody knows who that is vaguely. He was even younger than Buñuel when this film got made. Bunuel was (almost) 30 and Dalí still a few years away from his 30th birthday. It was their second collaboration after a short film that many have heard of for sure and some even consider it one of the most memorable short films in film history, already because of the eye scene.

But today we are not talking about that one, but about this film here. The third writer was born in the 18th century and already dead for over a century when this film here got made. The name is Marquis de Sade and again almost everybody will have heard it at least. According to imdb, this film we got here is his very first writing credit movie-wise. It is not a super long movie we got here. The cinema website where I went to today said 75 minutes, but I am not sure if this is correct. On imdb (and other reliable places in the web) it says that the film makes it just over an hour, but nowhere near the 70-minute mark even. It felt more believable and accurate I guess. As for the story, well, this film is very experimental and this may be one reason why I ended up disliking it really strongly I guess. I don’t need a full-on linear structure in terms of the plot, but what I saw here just never won me over at all. As I said earlier already, these segments that were without sound overall, just complete silence felt very bizarre. Then, on other occasions, the music felt way too loud for its own good and did not help the film at all. In other moments, there were people talking, but the audio was not on par with what we saw. There was a delay. Disappointing. I am not sure if it was intended like this or just a problem of the copy we were watching, but I saw that the Cinémathèque Francaise restored this film a while ago and this release is the copy we were watching today, so yeah it is very sub-par. But then again, a restauration cannot turn a poor film into a good one all of a sudden. I guess all the myth to this movie comes from the fact that it was forbidden to show it (in the sense of prohibited) for quite some time back in the day, so people were watching and curious why this was the case and what was so controversial about it. I am still wondering as well.

The title actually could make you think that the subject of gold rush could be a factor here and it feels true at the beginning when there is an ounce of western component to the outcome, but this changes quickly in all kinds of direction. The ending then seems more like an elaboration on Jesus in away, especially with the final shot then were we see a huge cross. But in-between the film takes all kinds of other directions and there is mostly focus on a man who is about to get punished for getting sexually active, well as sexually active as you can get in a 1930s film, with a female. They both have their clothes on and the only really dirty component to it all is the mud on the protagonist’s clothes and face. This man was played by Gaston Modot, an incredibly prolific actor and according to imdb he has 333 credits. What an amount. I can see why. He had decent recognition value and if there was anything semi-solid to this film, then it was him I suppose. His female counterpart with the memorable name Lya Lys was born here in Germany and did not even star in 20 works. So quite the opposite, even if double-digits is not too shabby either. Especially during those years, actors were having a hard time to make a transition from silent films to sound films. But for Lys, this is one of her early works and she did not return to the industry after 1940 despite being only slightly over 30 and living on for almost half a century then. With her first name and surname, you can never be really sure about the origins.

I will not elaborate on all the supporting players, but instead just write down a few more words why I did not like the film too much. The most bizarre moment came from a female character though and not the lead guy when she is in ecstasy pretty about how they killed their child. I guess this is some dark comedy overall that this film is all about. You can also take the scene as a connection there when a man actually shoots the child. I may be mistaken, but I thought that on one occasion you could see that it is a dummy lying there on the ground and not the kid, but, as I said, maybe I am wrong there. There was something to his/its face. The man and woman making out on the ground was also a bit of a running gag here how they are always interrupted. May be some logical consequence then that the fruit of their lovemaking is also doomed. Or was it their child even? I am not totally sure. Another running gag, or kicking gag you could call it, was one character kicking around things that were on the ground, no matter if we are talking about small animals or violins for whatever reason. He even kicked that blind man or what he was there before getting into the taxi. A prime example of violence for the sake of violence that adds nothing really to the story. I say that as somebody who adores Tarantino by the way. But yeah, this is almost it then.

The film began in a curious fashion as well, namely when we see something that resembles an animal documentary and there is focus on scorpions and I am not even surprised that this film does not elaborate on the cute beauty of nature if you wanna call it that, but rather on creatures that where fascination is joined by danger. Then again, a little rat it was I think included briefly afterwards and then the jump in time happens and the focus moves forward to the human characters. I guess this is it then pretty much. I could elaborate a bit more on the overall weirdness here, but I shall just leave it at that I suppose, even if there are bizarre scenes like the one with the huge cow or the carriage in the room or the guy who changes from being in pain to being lustful and thus creating a moment of severe jealousy etc. But it is up to everybody themselves how they perceive these scenes. As for the former two and also some other moments, this is certainly not a film where animals are in a good position and I have a feeling this is not just the case with the fictitious plot here, but also the production of the movie. This is just one of many aspects from the film that I did not like. It is the worst movie I have seen in quite some time as you can also see from my rating. I am baffled by how high some of the ratings for this are. I would not say that the three writers here are overrated in general, but what they delivered here is the exact opposite of creative and watchable. I am really glad this was such a short film and I give it my lowest rating possible. Highly not recommended.