Viridiana movie review & film summary (1961)

The film left Spain for France, shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1961, and wasn't allowed back into Spain until after Franco's death in 1975. In the 1960s and 1970s Buñuel (born 1900, died 1983) became established  in the first rank of directors, with Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, and scored one international success after another, most famously with "Belle de Jour" (1967).

There was always the sly subtext: The virtuous but disgraced blonde  of "Belle de Jour" mirroring Viridiana, or the kidding anti-clericism in "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" by the bishop whose fetish is pretending to be the gardener. And everywhere the shoes . Who but Buñuel would film a scene of Catherine Deneuve being dragged through a forest and focus on her feet? I am giving the wrong impression if you think Buñuel was by then a dirty old man. I think of him more as  amused. There's never anything blatant about his eroticism; he finds fetishes funny, as indeed they are except for the hapless fetishist.

The most famous sequence in "Viridiana" (apart from its scandalous reenactment of "The Last Supper") involves the cousin, Jorge (Francisco Rabal), observing a dog tied to the rear axle of a cart, and being pulled along the road on a rope. He stops the peasant, and buys the dog to free it. He doesn't notice another dog tied to another cart, going in the other direction. This summarizes Buñuel's world view.

In the larger world of the film, Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) visits her old uncle, Don Jaime (the Buñuel favorite Fernando Rey). For her it is an act of charity. Don Jaime is thunderstruck: Having not seen her for years, he realize she is the double of his late wife on their wedding night. As a favor, he begs her to put on the dead wife's wedding dress. As a favor, she does: Form-fitting, with a white corset, and of course much attention to the shoes. He is transfixed. He is in love. He asks her to marry him. She is shocked and tries to leave. He apologizes, gives her drugged coffee, and then…

Later, he hangs himself. Viridiana has by now given up the idea of a cloistered life and determined to perform works of mercy in the world. She gathers up 13 of the most wretched beggars in the town (a drunk, a leper, a crippled man, a blind man, an angry dwarf, a prostitute and so on) and brings them back to live on the estate. This does not redeem them, and they quarrel, fight, prove shiftless at the tasks she sets for them, and ostracize the leper (who says his sores are only ulcers). Meanwhile, Jorge arrives with his mistress and moves into the big house, while Viridiana abnegates herself by living in an outbuilding. Her experiment comes to a climax when the beggars, left on their own, throw a drunken feast and demolish the dining room. Then, alone or in small groups, they slink away from the place that gave them shelter. Cut to the card game mentioned earlier.