The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films: Part Two

Peter Hoskin and Matthew d'Ancona

4 July 2009

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Peter Hoskin and Matthew d’Ancona count down the final 25 of The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films

24.
Viridiana
(Luis Buñuel, 1961)

The only feature film Buñuel made in his native Spain is also one of the most controversial movies of all time — condemned by the Vatican as ‘blasphemous’ and attacked by the Spanish government, which tried to have it withdrawn from the Cannes competition. No surprise when you reflect that this tale of a young novice and her loss of innocence was released almost half a century ago, and that its moral heart is a bleakly empty echo chamber in which one can hear only the surrealist’s cackle.

Instructed by her mother superior to visit her ailing uncle, Don Jaime, Viridiana (an astonishing performance by Silvia Pinal) is an uneasy guest at his country estate, troubled by his cackhanded efforts at seduction. Rebuffed, Don Jaime drugs her and considers raping her in her sleep. The episode leads to his suicide and the arrival at the estate of his son Jorge. Viridiana turns to good works, inviting local beggars and invalids to treat her new home as a sanctuary.

This being Buñuel, her fine plans backfire spectacularly. To the strains of Handel’s Messiah, the gang of grotesques invades the house and perform a riotous and libidinous masque over a makeshift banquet, culminating in a scornful recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ that bequeathed to cinema one of its most striking and shocking moments. In all this grand guignol, there is a relish for humanity in all its fragility and hideousness, and a bruising contempt for piety of all kinds. The original nun on the run ends her story a very different person, her eyes opened to realities she had chosen to ignore. Our eyes are opened, too: which is what makes Buñuel one of the truly great directors. Md’A