13 Scandalous Movies That Sparked Religious Controversy

12. L’Age d’Or (1930)

In a short film that implied that Jesus and the Marquis de Sade had the same motivations, and where chanting bishops became skeletons, L’Age d’Or (1930) didn’t hold anything back and its creators and benefactors paid the price. Coming hot on the heels of creators’ Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou (1929), the film was commissioned by French aristocrats Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles. The uproar over the film’s content led to the Noailleses not only being shunned by French high society, but they were faced with a threat of excommunication by the Pope. Audience members who went to see the screening in Paris at Studio 28 were clobbered by fascists who also damaged the lobby’s surrealist paintings, acts that eventually led to the theater shutting down. All was not lost however, as a print was smuggled into England, though the camera negative was concealed behind seven seals for the next six decades.