Luis Buñuel: Aesthetics of the Irrational: Viridiana

Despite being banned on release by Franco's censors on account of anti-clericalism and blasphemy, Bunuel's first film in his native land after decades of exile in Mexico and the States restored him to international attention at a stroke.

This is a dark, humorous and cynical story about different facets of corruption with Silvia Pinal as a young novice filled with charity and compassion who is released from the convent to care for her lecherous uncle (Fernando Rey). Anxious to both preserve her virtue and extend her compassion to peasants, beggars and outcasts, she is met by ingratitude, cruelty and greed. The film became notorious at the time of its release for its parody of The Last Supper (feebly imitated in Altman's M*A*S*H) enacted to the ethereal strains of Handel's Messiah.

Viridiana, dir. Luis Buñuel, Spain/Mexico 1961, 91 mins.

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