BEST FILMS OF 1930
by Mike Lorefice

L'Age d'or
Luis Bunuel

Scared by the acceptance and popularity of Un Chien Andalou, Bunuel and Salvador Dali made sure this acidic follow up left no audience member unprovoked. This revolutionary anarchistic work largely forsakes the dreamlike qualities, quick cuts, and camera tricks of its predecessor that helped get it over with the evil bourgeois. Right wingers working to get a good film banned is par for the course, but Bunuel succeeded in pissing people off so badly that he nearly ended his directorial career. Constantly mixing time and place, mood and genre, Age is consistent with Chien in denying plot, cohesion, and continuity, but its enemies and goal of uncompromised human freedom are far clearer. An attack on anyone who has authority and power, with a cruel worldview showing people constantly frustrated due to the morality and rules they enforce being nothing more than methods of repression. As human behavior is little different than the scorpions that open the film, Bunuel keeps quite a distance from the would be lovers in this exploration of impulse vs. inhibition. Someone or something always stands in the way of their happiness, but despite the eroticism and some romantic music we aren't supposed to feel sorry for them. Their hearts winding up crushed is more an inevitability of being a part of society, particularly the bourgeoisie. If Age weren't so far ahead of its time in what the audience was willing to accept it would get a lot more credit for it's provocative experimental percussion and classical music soundtrack. There are too many memorable images to mention, but it should be noted that one of the reasons they are so memorable is unlike Chien they are largely believable in and of themselves. Age actually starts out in documentary style and perhaps should be seen more as a bridge between the surrealism of Chien and the quasi documentary of Land Without Bread than simply as a companion piece to Chien. It's easy to see how this black comedy with a series of perverse gags influenced the Monty Python troop, but its call for freedom and the fact that it remains clinically detached in its exploration of Marx and Freud makes Dusan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism one of it's closest descendants. [9/3/06] ***1/2

All Quiet on the Western Front
Lewis Milestone

****

Earth
Aleksandr Dovzhenko

****

Salt for Svenetia
Mikheil Kalatozishvili

****