By Pilar Dirickson Garrett
Viridiana, the irreverent masterpiece by Spanish-born Mexican director Luis Buñuel starring Mexican actress Silvia Pinal and now widely regarded to be one of the best films of all time (Viridiana ranked 37th on the British Film Institute’s 2012 director’s poll of the greatest films in history), premiered on this day at the 14th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1961.
The day after its premiere, the film was announced the winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or, sharing the honor with The Long Absence by French director Henri Colpi. The film is also the only Spanish-language Palme d’Or winners in the history of Cannes (the Mexican film María Candelaria by Emilio Fernández was presented the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film in 1946).
Banned in Spain by the dictatorial government of Francisco Franco and vehemently denounced by the Vatican, Buñuel’s Viridiana follows the story of a novice nun who does her utmost to maintain her virtuous Catholic principles, but is then sent to live with her lecherous uncle who, alongside a motley assemblage of paupers, forces her to confront the limits of her own idealism.
Shot in Spain in the early months of 1961 and also starring Francisco Rabal Jorge and Fernando Rey, Viridiana was the first film Buñuel made in his motherland since his departure to the United States and then Mexico in 1939. The film therefore marks an important moment in Buñuel’s career, representing his return not only to Spain, the country of his birth, but also to international fame and filmmaking. Several of the director’s previous films, particularly Los Olvidados (1951), Él (1952), and The Exterminating Angel (1962), all shot in Mexico, are now regarded as monumental, but prior to the splash caused by Viridiana were not as widely known to the world at large (although Los Olvidados did garner Buñuel the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951).
Viridiana, regardless of Franco’s personal position on the film, caused a considerable stir in its own right — the Catholic Church was up in arms over it’s release and went so far as to call it “blasphemous” in the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’osservatore Romano. After being condemned by Franco’s government, the film wasn’t shown in Spain until 1977. However, by then Viridiana had become an international sensation and garnered a vast reputation, both for itself and its director. When asked about his intentions in shooting the film, Buñuel remarked with his characteristic offhand wit, “I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am.”
Rather, Buñuel intended to render on screen, in cinematic language, the Spain that he knew and that he’d left behind. He turned everyday life into signs and symbols, and held up a merciless mirror to society that, in his eyes, could not be saved. Sixty years later, Viridiana is as bold and astonishing as ever.
