Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí made the 1930 film L’Age d’Or, known for its scandalous Surrealist imagery.
L’Age d’Or is a French-language film directed by Buñuel with a screenplay credited to Buñuel and Dalí. It uses discontinuous episodes, shocking juxtapositions, sexual provocation, and attacks on social conventions rather than a conventional narrative. The film’s title translates as The Golden Age.
The production followed Un Chien Andalou, the 1929 Buñuel-Dalí film that opens with the famous razor-and-eye sequence. Although the two films share a Surrealist approach, L’Age d’Or is longer and more openly confrontational about religion, bourgeois behavior, and erotic desire.
A public controversy followed its Paris screenings, and the film was subsequently banned for many years. It is sometimes confused with Buñuel’s later films, including The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which are also satirical but belong to different periods.