Research I had done on the historic Surrealism black and white French film, L'age D'or - to gain knowledge about the genre 'Surrealism' and it's conventions

1.
GENRE STUDY: Surrealism
Case Study ­ L’Age D’or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Âge_d%27Or
­ SHORT FILM ­
(The Golden Age)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Produced by
Vicomte Charles de Noailles and
Marie‐Laure de Noailles
Written by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali
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Released: 29 November 1930 in France
Duration: 63 minutes
Language: French
Budget: 1 million Francs
Plot/Summary
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the
story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their
passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general. In
one notable scene, the young girl passionately fellates the toe of a religious statue.
Salvador Dali:
Salvador is a famous surrealist artist and paints pictures of strange things. He has a
very creative eye, creating surreal images.
Surreal ­ fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to
represent unconscious thoughts and dreams
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
This gives the surrealist film an advantage, as he is
a professional artist who specializes in surreal
work.
He is famous for his A famous art work by
flicked‐up pointy Salvador called
moustache Explosion, 1954

2. Textual Analysis:
 Colour Palette
 Editing – Transition between frames
 Mise‐en‐scene – Lighting, Proxemics
 Camera Shots
 Personal response
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Colour Palette
Since this film is made in the 30’s (1930), the film is old fashioned. This means that the film is similar
to stop motion. The films from the film cameras are developed on filmstrips but the frame rate of the
film is much slower than the modern day camera. The film then appears to be like stop motion as the
motion of the pictures are quite jerky. When editing, the filmstrips are literally cut and glued together
to create different shots.
As the movie is old, the colour palette is
black and white film. The black and white
film seems to be exposed quite a lot,
meaning the white light is exaggerated
onto the filmstrip. The film also seems to
look as if it is glowing creating the pictures
to look faded.
The exposure of the film disallows detail
in light coloured objects such as poster on
a sunny day, using natural light.

3.
I like the colour palette used in old Surrealist films as it gives a lot of character to the
film’s appearance. I like how the exposure is quite high to make white light stand out as unedited
black and white film look dull. Overall this has inspired me to choose to use black and white film
when creating the final product for Unit 5.
Editing
As said before, this film is made in the 30’s, which limits the amount of editing done to the movie. The
cutting of the filmstrips and gluing back together is as far as the editing could possibly go. However
there is a modern approach to editing old film like this, which is destroying film. This movie does not
seem to use this technique, however at the beginning of the French film, the title ‘L’AGE D’OR’ seems
jerky and each frame contains some white dots and lines around the black background. Dust or
scratches on the filmstip can explain this, which is the base of destroying film.
The title page within 8 seconds
There are edits when cutting to the next frame/camera shot. The only edit the editor has used for
transition is fade to black or fade to the next frame. Sometimes frames overlap but I don’t think this is
effective, specially when the ediot chooses to use it for the title as everything becomes messy and not
legible .
I like the restricted editing used in this film as it again gives the piece character. It also
allows audience to keep involved with the film as it’s jerky and brings up the energy of the piece,
keeping it alive. However if I were to use this editing method in my final product, I would use the
modern technique of scratching the film to create more exaggerated texture to the pictures. I would

4. also use modern‐day editing of photos (using possibly as simple as MacBook’s Preview program) to
adjust the brightness and contrast levels just to ensure the photos are not unexciting black and white.
I may also add some sepia prints on top to make the appearance of my product more appealing and
original.
Mise­en­scene
I have decided not t comment on the Proxemics of the characters as my objective to find a genre with an
interesting appearance to the film.
Lighting
Throughout the French film, natural light is used. However, some artifical light or artifical shade is
used to block off sun from areas and to allow the sun to light up certain areas. For example, I had
noticed throughout the movie that the characters faces are lit up meaning the directors intention was
to focus on the actors facial expressions rather than they body language, which is understandable as
the body language and movement is ruined due to the jerky stop‐motion‐like film. This lighting
makes the brightness level quite high, allowing the pictures to look more faded.
I do not like the use of lighting as I think it’s too tedious. I prefer to use mostly artificial light
to highlight and focus on points of my desire.
Proxemics
I specifically like this one scene in L’age D’or as I like the camera shot of this scene to show the
proxemics between the two characters (The mother, and the daughter/lover of the male main
character).
I like how in the frame, you cannot see either of the
characters faces. I thought this was visually interesting as it
unables the audience’s vision of the characters faces, focuses
on the body language. But as the body language is limited to
sitting and standing with no other movement, the audience
then focuses there eyes on the proxemics between the two
characters. This shot is similar to the ‘Over‐the‐shoulder’
camera angle. However, this is zoomed out a fair bit to
enlarge the area and show the set. I would use this technique
in my future product as this is again visually interesting.
Camera Shots
In the French film, a lot of close up shots are used to show the audience the characters facial
expressions. I personally like the camera shot shown in the previous image to describe the

5. proxemics, which is explained above. In that same scene, there is another camera shot I would like to
use in my final product as it focuses on the actor/characters facial expression.
These frames act as a sort of interview as it goes from one shot of one character, to the next shot of
the other character whom is 1st character is speaking to. It acts as an interview as it conveys a sort of
‘put on the spot’ tension between the characters. I thought this would be a good way of showing a
Love Story, which is also what this film is about. I thought this because it can show the individual
characters emotions toward each other. Putting the two frames together though (like done above)
would also create an effective visual as this can compare and contrast the characters emotions. This
would be specifically for a break up in a love story.
Personal thoughts on the film and development to decisions
Overall I thought this French film was very useful to analyze as it encouraged me to create a product
that will be visually interesting. It gave me ideas of how to do the product and what genre I would
make it. I found that putting the Love/Romantic Tragedy with a sort of stop‐motion black and white
or sepia film. I also found a few camera shots that will help me with creating the product. However
this did not improve my decision in making Music Video and it’s debatable that this media type will
be suitable. However, I do think it may be suitable to create; I just need to be cautious with my song
choice. It is obvious that a Hip Hop or up beat song would fit this genre and similar visuals.