L'AGE D'OR (RARE CATALOGUE AND FILM PROGRAMME WITH ERRATA SLIP)

EXCEPTIONALLY RARE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE AND FILM PROGRAMME WITH ERRATA SLIP

Bunuel, Louis and Salvador Dali
L'AGE D'OR
Paris: s.p.(Studio 28), 1930
22 x 13cm, 48pp. Original gold wrappers. The first edition of this programme for the first ever screening of the surrealist film which Bunuel claimed would be "without redemption". Thirty-four b/w stills from the film are reproduced herein along with a detailed synopsis of the film. Additionally there are collective and individual (Breton, Crevel, Eluard, Aragon and Thirion) texts by the surrealist group designed to show public support for the film's philosophy of antagonism along with reproductions after works by Ernst (2), Arp, Tanguy (2), Man Ray, Miro and Dali. Taking their chance to use the film's expected success as a vehicle for propaganda the surrealists put on a mini-exhibition and twenty paintings (all listed) were on display in the lobby of the cinema. Also provided is a bibliography of books available from the surrealist Librarie Jose Corti. Dali provides a lithograph and short text as frontispiece and in the 30 or so words hints at his primacy in the script idea although this may have been a typical egomaniacal exaggeration. The film was much more controversial than even the duo's previous success du scandale Un chien andalou (which had run in the same cinema for two months) as the religious attack found within the film caused uproar: the financier for the work was rumoured to have been threatened by excommunication by the Pope (avoided only by his mother travelling to Rome to plead for clemency) and on 3 December 1930 members of the League of Patriots and the Anti-Jewish league attacked the cinema and the corresponding show of surrealist paintings in the lobby as well as disrupting the screening with smoke bombs and ink thrown onto the screen. This is a very good / near fine example of an exceptionally rare surrealist publication for an exceptionally important event in the history of avant garde cinema which still contains the laid in errata slip although a text on one of the pages with a deliberate blasphemous reference to christ was crossed out due to self-censorship by the cinema (the crossing out is minimal and the offending words can still be easily read underneath the penmark - as probably intended).