Psychoanalisis & Irrationality / L'Age d'Or

We begin this new academic year following an endeavour that we begun the previous one. I'm glad to initiate this year's posts with L'Age d'Or, a 1930 surrealist film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel who wrote the script along with Salvador Dali (a nice touch of picturesque surrealism).

The plot is based around a couple that is in love and constantly has to fight their way through various obstacles imposed by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Its methodology was, and remains extremely controversial.

The movie is filled with 'aggresive' sexual symbolics and criticism to the Church and a repressed, puritanical society. A 'sensored-since-inception' work of art.

Its provocative content varies from a woman that fellates the toes of a religious statue, a man who repeatedly shoots his own son with a shotgun (several times after his death) or kicks a dog several feet up in the air for no reason, to a final scene narrating an orgy similar to Marquis de Sede's 1785 novel '120 days of Sodom' in which a Jesus like character involved in this 'deplorable' situation.

Analysis:

Clearly a shocking work of the 7th art, most certainly deserved its censorship in 1930 and its fairly criticised now. I do not personally believe in censorship, however the 30s did not remotely scrape the new modern liberalism and freedom of speech and literature. Not only the symbolism is violent, but certain scenes themselves that confused the public and outraged the former high-culture, as well as fascist groups that assaulted viewers and destroyed work by the Spanish 'artists' involved.

The repercussions where as severe as anyone would expect.