L'Âge d'or

by Paul Hammond

In one of the great collaborations of cinema history, L'age d'or united the geniuses of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali in the making of a uniquely savage blend of visual poetry and social criticism. One of the outstanding works of the Surrealist movement, L'Age d'or was banned and vilified for many years in many countries, becoming justly legendary for its subversive eroticism and its furious dissection of "civilized" values.
In a remarkable, intuitive reading of L'Age d'or, Paul Hammond interweaves a detailed account of the extraordinary circumstances of its production with a dazzling interpretation of its aesthetic and political nuances. At once authoritative and polemical, this is a study entirely in tune with its subject, a fitting accompaniment to one of the major landmarks of world cinema.

Genres: Film, Media Tie In, Art

76 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

About the author

Paul Hammond is a writer, painter and translator. He is the author of Marvellous Melies (1974), the compiler (with Ian Breakwell) of Seeing in the Dark: A Compendium of Cinemagoing (1990) and the editor of The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist Writing on the Cinema (1978). He lives in Barcelona.

Reviews

[Thomas Breen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insightful, intuitive, a little esoteric in prose (not sure how many times the word ‘onanistic’ is used. But a plenty). But an appropriately wry and dense scene-by-scene dissection of a movie that really does retain its power of visual and narrative provocation these nine decades later.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way to read this book is to sit with it while you are watching the film on a secondary viewing, pausing when necessary. It is in the close analysis and interpretation that the book becomes the most interesting and it works really well as an accompanying guide.