3. L'Age d'or (1930)
L'age d'or is an early example of the great Spanish surrealist director Luis Bunuel's output. Co written with Salvador Dali, it was inevitable that the film would be exotic in nature and ahead of its time. The film is comprised of five vignettes which are heavily anti-clerical and anti bourgeoisie in their vein. As this article is a study of the representation of de Sade and his works in the cinema world, it is the fifth and final vignette that concerns us. The intertitle reads 120 Days of Depraved Acts - a direct allusion to de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. The film concerns the surviving orgiasts and their return to the outside world. The Duc de Blangis comes out bedecked in robes looking like a dead ringer for Jesus Christ himself. A young woman runs out of the castle in a right state and the Duc manages to talk her into going back into the castle. We hear her screams and the Duc re-emerges, beardless. The final image is of a crucifix covered in female scalps, blowing in the wind to some jaunty music. The film created the biggest outcry in that the Duc de Blangis's head was in fact the head of Jesus Christ. The film is certainly a rape of the senses, it successfully manages to take a piece of de Sade and use it how de Sade would have liked his work to be used. That is for the purposes of sacrilege, blasphemy, torture and murder and to make a ghoulish after statement - The crucifix covered in female scalps. I could read deeper but I will stop there for fear of boring you.