The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

L’âge d’or
135
It created the kind of tingles you got from a great dream. Then, in spite of
the denials by Buñuel and Dalí, they were making a narrative that had clear
narrative shape in the central section. It has the shape of boy meets girl, gets
girl, and loses girl, and then gets to go magma-headedly, mad love crazy. The
real connection for me comes from the climax of the movie, when Gaston
Modot has lost Lya to another, even older man. He’s just completely moltenheaded
with jealousy and despair, and he starts throwing flaming pine trees
out the window. He starts ripping apart pillows and walking around with
handfuls of feathers. He’s doing all the things that I felt I had just done just
earlier that year when I had been dumped and walked around with a plow
in my living room and dropped a bust.
Also a lot of the things he did earlier in the movie, before the breakup
when he was courting Lya, reminded me of the kinds of mad things that we
all do. When he brings a dress to the party and throws it on a chair to make
Lya jealous, just because it’s an empty dress, then he abandons the dress
on the chair and he starts working on her. I don’t know, just everything
had the same shape as a courtship that goes well for a while and then falls
completely apart. The details are all different, but the shape and the flavors
just reminded me of my own life. The program was actually working—the
surrealistic program, which exhausted everyone by the year 1980.
Did you see it in 1980? Because that was the year after the new negative
arose in 1979. It had been censored, actually, for more than forty years.
Maddin: I heard it had been banned for a long time. The print was great.
By the time I wore out the tape it looked terrible again, but I remember the
beautiful print. It was really nice. I was twenty-four when I saw it.
And had you been aware of either of them separately, or Un chien
andalou?
Maddin: I was just starting to watch films as a grown-up. I had certainly
heard of Dalí, but I don’t think I’d heard of Buñuel yet. But then right away
I started looking into it. I can’t remember the exact order of things, but I
probably tracked down Chien andalou right after. For some reason, I liked
the breathing room the one-hour L’ âge d’or had. I can really appreciate what
Chien andalou has.