Monday, June 24, 2013

Spit it out and let it go.

Spanish director Luis Buñuel made L'Age d'or in 1930. Officially, he wrote it with Salvador Dalí. When the film was released it caused a scandal, and it didn't see the light up day in some parts of the world until much later. It's now considered a classic. But that's not what's interesting. What's interesting is this:
I haven’t seen L’Age d’or since it was made, so I can’t really say what I think of it. Although Dali compared it to American films (undoubtedly from a technical point of view), he later wrote that his intentions “in writing the screenplay” were to expose the shameful mechanisms of contemporary society. For me, it was a film about passion, l’amour fou, the irresistible force that thrusts two people together, and about the impossibility of their ever becoming one.
That's from Buñuel's autobiography, My Last Sigh. The autobiography is generally light on the details of Buñuel's filmmaking, and when information does crop up it's usually as an aside (often in parentheses) in the style: I once saw a dead goat eating a fig (Later, I tried unsuccessfully to recreate this image in The Discreet Phantom of the Garden.) Anyway, my point is that after making L'Age d'or Buñuel didn't see a need to watch it again. I don't know if this is because of a general apathy toward his own films or another reason, but it seems like good approach. There are those who endlessly tinker with their work after it's been released to the public and those who mark the occasion by starting something new. I like the latter. Getting things done is more important than perfection, and once it's done why go back to it?

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