There will never be anyone like him. Since he shocked audiences with his extremely subversive Surrealist film L'AGE D'OR which showed a Christ-like figure emerging from 120 days of unimaginable debauchery in a remote castle looking oddly sensual and sexually free, he's gone hand in hand with poking fun at those who believe in God, in the Church, and the privileged.
Due to his personal, political and religious beliefs (he was a staunch atheist) he had been self-imposed to exile with the rise of Francisco Franco who from the mid-Thirties onward threw Spain into a period of repression and stagnant evolution, a situation common and typical of nations under a dictatorship. Bunuel's later success in the country who came to adopt him as one of its own -- Mexico -- brought Spain's eye focusing straight into Bunuel's and Franco decided that maybe Bunuel could be make a movie to his own liking. After all, Spain wasn't yet known for having a strong cinematic presence until then (despite the San Sebastian Film Festival) and it could use all the help it could get. Bunuel up until then was Spain's main exponent of intelligent cinema even in his "for hire" and "less controversial" movies from his Fifties period which at their most Neo-realist always had hints of his fondness for Surrealism.
Would it that Franco had an inkling of what Bunuel, one of the strongest, most stubborn personalities from the past century (whom I admire), had in store as the ultimate rabbit trick. Bunuel grudgingly returned to Spain under the advice (and financing) of Gustavo Alatriste and produced one of the most scathing attacks on Catholicism yet: the story of Sor Viridiana (the great Silvia Pinal, blond and detached in that Hitchcockian-blond way, making her debasement the more fun), the nun who is so devout you want to whack her in the head with a frying pan, who returns to her homestead where her uncle (Fernando Rey) lives and finds that she's up against some interesting opposition and a systematic stripping away at her own faith. First, with the assistance of his faithful but slightly amoral maid Ramona (Margarita Lozano) he decides to drug Viridiana and blackmail her into staying at his house after seeing how similar she looks to his deceased wife and perversely enjoying how she looks in his dead wife's wedding gown. While he stops short of raping her in her sleep, he isn't above telling her she can't leave because they've had sex. Viridiana, horrified, decides to leave even when he tells her he lied. Of course, in typical Bunuel style, he interrupts her attempt at escape, kills off the uncle, and has her return to the house.
An action interrupted has always been present in Bunuel's work. In THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE it's the simple act of eating and socializing. In THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE and BELLE DE JOUR, it's intimacy with a loved one. Here, it's not only the return to the safety of religion but altruism as well. Viridiana, now the mistress of the house, has to share it with her cousin Jorge (Francisco Rabal), a man serving as Bunuel's doppelganger as a pragmatic man who believes only hard work will pull the country out of the muck it's in. She takes in the homeless, the disabled, and the poor, giving them food and places to sleep and their daily prayers. Jorge has other plans. In a wicked sequence Viridiana gathers the homeless into prayer as workers steadfastly go around their duties. Bunuel cuts from her glowing, blissful face to the dirty activity around the construction. It's almost as if Bunuel were saying, "It's not us interrupting your prayers -- you're the ones who aren't doing anything. You're in the way of our daily work." Parallel to this, a poignant scene where Jorge shows his humanity towards a dog who is walking under a cart, tied, which he rescues from its fate. Watch as, not a minute after he's purchased the dog from its cruel owners, another cart trudges by, with a dog tied to its underbelly. The cycle of casual cruelty won't stop.
The taking in of the beggars proves to be Viridiana's undoing. While she and the entire household are out, the beggars take control of the house, set up a mock dinner party that spins out of control, which Bunuel films as a reverse Last Supper with the ultimate act of sabotage thrown at it as a woman lifts up her skirt to the camera. While regaining control of the house won't be an easy task -- Viridiana is nearly raped (again) but saved by Jorge who is able to manipulate one of the homeless men into releasing him -- it's clear that Viridiana's actions, coming from a misguided good place, have almost destroyed a generation's worth of tradition in the form of a household. Because Jorge is the character who emerges as the strongest with his knowledge of how to run an estate, he represents the future of Spain, and in having Jorge, Viridiana, and Ramona (faithful to the end) wind up playing cards in an intellectual threesome, the movie hits its mark in effectively killing religion in favor of the practical matters, further seen when a little girl without knowing burns the cross of thorns Viridiana used when she would go into her excruciating prayers as a nun.
A brilliant movie, possibly one of the most significant of last century, one that smeared Spain's upper class society as it did the Church, and the one that got denounced by the Vatican (as if that would matter).
Due to his personal, political and religious beliefs (he was a staunch atheist) he had been self-imposed to exile with the rise of Francisco Franco who from the mid-Thirties onward threw Spain into a period of repression and stagnant evolution, a situation common and typical of nations under a dictatorship. Bunuel's later success in the country who came to adopt him as one of its own -- Mexico -- brought Spain's eye focusing straight into Bunuel's and Franco decided that maybe Bunuel could be make a movie to his own liking. After all, Spain wasn't yet known for having a strong cinematic presence until then (despite the San Sebastian Film Festival) and it could use all the help it could get. Bunuel up until then was Spain's main exponent of intelligent cinema even in his "for hire" and "less controversial" movies from his Fifties period which at their most Neo-realist always had hints of his fondness for Surrealism.
Would it that Franco had an inkling of what Bunuel, one of the strongest, most stubborn personalities from the past century (whom I admire), had in store as the ultimate rabbit trick. Bunuel grudgingly returned to Spain under the advice (and financing) of Gustavo Alatriste and produced one of the most scathing attacks on Catholicism yet: the story of Sor Viridiana (the great Silvia Pinal, blond and detached in that Hitchcockian-blond way, making her debasement the more fun), the nun who is so devout you want to whack her in the head with a frying pan, who returns to her homestead where her uncle (Fernando Rey) lives and finds that she's up against some interesting opposition and a systematic stripping away at her own faith. First, with the assistance of his faithful but slightly amoral maid Ramona (Margarita Lozano) he decides to drug Viridiana and blackmail her into staying at his house after seeing how similar she looks to his deceased wife and perversely enjoying how she looks in his dead wife's wedding gown. While he stops short of raping her in her sleep, he isn't above telling her she can't leave because they've had sex. Viridiana, horrified, decides to leave even when he tells her he lied. Of course, in typical Bunuel style, he interrupts her attempt at escape, kills off the uncle, and has her return to the house.
An action interrupted has always been present in Bunuel's work. In THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE it's the simple act of eating and socializing. In THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE and BELLE DE JOUR, it's intimacy with a loved one. Here, it's not only the return to the safety of religion but altruism as well. Viridiana, now the mistress of the house, has to share it with her cousin Jorge (Francisco Rabal), a man serving as Bunuel's doppelganger as a pragmatic man who believes only hard work will pull the country out of the muck it's in. She takes in the homeless, the disabled, and the poor, giving them food and places to sleep and their daily prayers. Jorge has other plans. In a wicked sequence Viridiana gathers the homeless into prayer as workers steadfastly go around their duties. Bunuel cuts from her glowing, blissful face to the dirty activity around the construction. It's almost as if Bunuel were saying, "It's not us interrupting your prayers -- you're the ones who aren't doing anything. You're in the way of our daily work." Parallel to this, a poignant scene where Jorge shows his humanity towards a dog who is walking under a cart, tied, which he rescues from its fate. Watch as, not a minute after he's purchased the dog from its cruel owners, another cart trudges by, with a dog tied to its underbelly. The cycle of casual cruelty won't stop.
The taking in of the beggars proves to be Viridiana's undoing. While she and the entire household are out, the beggars take control of the house, set up a mock dinner party that spins out of control, which Bunuel films as a reverse Last Supper with the ultimate act of sabotage thrown at it as a woman lifts up her skirt to the camera. While regaining control of the house won't be an easy task -- Viridiana is nearly raped (again) but saved by Jorge who is able to manipulate one of the homeless men into releasing him -- it's clear that Viridiana's actions, coming from a misguided good place, have almost destroyed a generation's worth of tradition in the form of a household. Because Jorge is the character who emerges as the strongest with his knowledge of how to run an estate, he represents the future of Spain, and in having Jorge, Viridiana, and Ramona (faithful to the end) wind up playing cards in an intellectual threesome, the movie hits its mark in effectively killing religion in favor of the practical matters, further seen when a little girl without knowing burns the cross of thorns Viridiana used when she would go into her excruciating prayers as a nun.
A brilliant movie, possibly one of the most significant of last century, one that smeared Spain's upper class society as it did the Church, and the one that got denounced by the Vatican (as if that would matter).