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Luis Bunuel's second film is a surreal attack on bourgeios ideals that incited a riot when first released and still retains its power to shock. Bunuel began the film as a collaboration with Salvador Dali, but after a few days working together the two had a falling out and Bunuel made the film himself, incorporating many of Dali's ideas. Its narrative follows two nameless characters, a man and a woman, through a series of scenes connected by dreamlike logic as they try, unsuccessfully, to make love. One memorable sequence finds the couple writhing around on a cliff when a mob of socialites comes upon them and pries them apart. Frustrated, the man sees a yelping poodle and kicks it into the air. L'AGE D'OR is not only an attack on bourgeois life but also a doctrine that directs humanity to live as the surrealists believed they should: that is, by placing love before everything else in life, such as the church, status, and family. Funny, disturbing, and thoroughly bizarre, Bunuel's film is a purposefully blasphemous and corrosive work that attacks social institutions with such vigor and imagination that one cannot help but be entertained.
