One of the greatest collaborations of cinema history, L'Âge d'Or(1930) united the geniuses of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali in the making of a Surrealist masterpiece - a uniquely savage blend of visual poetry and social criticism. The film was banned and vilified for many years in many countries, becoming justly legendary for its subversive eroticism and its furious dissection of 'civilised' values.
In a remarkable, intuitive reading of L'Âge d'Or, Paul Hammond interweaves a detailed account of the extraordinary circumstances of its production with a dazzling interpretation of its aesthetic and political nuances. At once authoritative and polemical, this is a study entirely in tune with its subject, a fitting celebration of a major landmark in world cinema.

A lovely book. A sharp new look at an great old film. -- George Melly

Paul Hammond is a writer, painter and translator. He is the author of Marvellous Melies, the compiler (with Ian Breakwell) of Seeing in the Dark: A Compendium of Cinemagoing and the editor of The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist Writing on the Cinema. He lives in Barcelona.