{"id":729,"date":"2009-05-25T16:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-25T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/?p=729"},"modified":"2011-04-23T00:09:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T05:09:52","slug":"cinematheque-lage-dor-bunuel-1930","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/2009\/05\/cinematheque-lage-dor-bunuel-1930\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinematheque: L’\u00c2ge d’or (Bu\u00f1uel, 1930)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What a first feature this is! I had a slack-jawed grin for almost the entire duration of Bu\u00f1uel’s hilarious and absurd inaugural slap in the face of religion and the upper class (inaugural ‘feature-length’ slap, at least). While much of the symbolism in the film would hardly be extreme in recent contexts constructed by Antichrist<\/span>s and Holy Mountain<\/span>s, the structural graininess of pre-WWII celluloid intuitively evokes a slightly conservative viewing palette (Guy Maddin’s sense of humor capitalizes on this), and makes the radical nature of the film still potent today. Always ready for a good Jesus bashing, this film satisfies so many of my cynical urges: throwing clergyman out of second-floor windows, slapping careless women, and shooting bratty children dead in their steps. Luis Bu\u00f1uel’s captial ‘S’ Surrealism is triumphantly and intelligently absurd, while faker ‘surreal’ filmmakers like Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Michel Gondry come across as insignificantly quirky in comparison.<\/p>\n

Offering up an interpretation of the film’s narrative and symbols not only seems unmanageable for anyone without a sturdy background in the founding ideologies of Surrealism, but unnecessary. More than Bu\u00f1uel and Dal\u00ed’s prior, and similar, Un Chien Andalou<\/span>, this film’s subtext is more viscerally accessible. The prologue explaining the behavioral nature of scorpions is just as much of a non sequitor as the cow in the bed or the burning kitchen, but they are intuitively linked to the goings-on in the film in ways that makes the film richer rather than obtuse, such as the cutting of the eye at the beginning of Andalou<\/span>, which I cannot find purpose in other than as a memorable shock tactic (not to say that it is empty and meaningless, but that it is detached from the narrative thread, and can only be integrated through an academic interpretation).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a first feature this is! I had a slack-jawed grin for almost the entire duration of Bu\u00f1uel’s hilarious and absurd inaugural slap in the face of religion and the upper class (inaugural ‘feature-length’ slap, at least). While much of the symbolism in the film would hardly be extreme in recent contexts constructed by Antichrists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3222,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/3222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}