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Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.

Shattered illusions for everybody involved, sadly also for those watching this movie

The criticism of intent is a killer on bad films that have no real depth and do not last a few years beyond their intent&#39;s purpose. Such was re-emphasized to me watching Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel&#39;s vastly overrated black and white 1961 &#39;shock classic&#39; Viridiana. Of course, all the alleged shock value had to do with Buñuel&#39;s puerile attempts to poke fun at and scandalize both the Roman Catholic Church and the regime of Fascist dictator Francisco Franco, and nearly five decades later it looks more like a college prank video than any serious cinema. Furthermore, it is not in the least bit subversive, as many poor critics claim, because its criticism of the Church, especially- and even then, was so manifest as to make one wonder if those who claimed it had subversive qualities even knew what the term meant. Of course, given Buñuel&#39;s start as a Surrealist superstar- that overused and often misapplied term, it&#39;s no surprise that much of his filmic career would be seen through such a pretentious lens- especially by fans masquing as critics, rather than dealing with the individual films, and whether they fail or not. The fact is, while Viridiana is a reasonably capably made film- on a technical level (although there is no standout cinematography, musical scoring, nor interesting visual compositions), it fails because its screenplay is abysmal. As in other &#39;classics&#39; of his, whose luster has faded (think Belle De Jour), Viridiana is larded with cardboard characters, caricatures, and outright stereotypes that are bad enough, alone, but given that they are not put to any truly subversive use, makes them all the more a wasted effort. They also suggest the paper thin grasp of reality- especially the political sort, that die hard Leftists like him are often represented as having; making him the biggest unintended caricature of all those associated with the film. Yes, Buñuel is not as pretentious and lacking in filmic basics as that other Surreal fraud, Jean Cocteau- so what? That doesn&#39;t make Buñuel a Master; not even close, despite all the praise tossed his way. Viridiana fails not for a huge error or two, but for an unending string of little wrong and inane things, such as ridiculous symbolism- Viridiana sleepwalks and tosses ashes into Jaime&#39;s bed, and a film that moves far too quickly and gives no real insight into anything- especially its characters. For ellipses to work, they must be deployed within well-defined characterization, so that viewers can reasonably extrapolate the elided events. Without that, the missing elements shortchange both the tale and the characters. Furthermore, the film&#39;s criticism of Roman Catholicism is absolutely depthless- it has been done before and since, and done better. There is no intellectual rigor, nor a hint of poesy. The political intent overwhelms the minuscule art. And, without real characters, who gives a damn what is intended? The exercise is rendered pointless by its own incompetence, something that haunts most of the Buñuel canon, which may explain why Viridiana- film and character, have such vacancies in their gazes.

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Viridiana

&quot;Viridiana&quot; is considered one of the best films of all time and possibly the best Spanish film of the last century. It was not exactly unwatchable to me, but it bored me big time and I wouldn&#39;t watch it again if my life depended on it. I can&#39;t bash it for anything in particular, but I don&#39;t like it in any respect. No wonder, since I didn&#39;t like the other Buñuel&#39;s I watched. I think I didn&#39;t rate any of his &quot;masterpieces&quot; over five out of ten. The film won the Palme d&#39;Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961, but despite that recognition, it was immediately banned in Spain for blasphemy and obscenity (insinuation of incest, rape, and necrophilia). 4/10

A young nun, about to commit to life in the parish, visits her widowed Uncle at the behest of her Mother Superior and stays at his farm estate for a few days. Lonely and horny, he asks her to stay longer as she resembles his dead wife but she says she must return. So during her abnormally deep sleeps, he tells her he violated her (!!!) thus she won&#39;t be able to become a nun. Ummm.....yah.....that&#39;s the blueprint for getting a woman to stay with you. After a tragedy at the estate, the man&#39;s son comes to bring the estate back to working order with the help of the niece with the goal of helping those less fortunate. But to her surprise, helping those poor does not go so smoothly and disarray ensues. This was a very strange story. Why would someone think this up? While it had nice cinematography and a peculiar, intrigue it was not enjoyable.

&quot;Vridiana&quot; is a co-production between Spain and Mexico from 1961, so this film is already way over 60 years old now, but it is nice to see that actress Silvia Pinal, who plays the title character here, is still alive and I hope this will also be the case if you come here a little later then. The same cannot be said for too many obviously that were part of this project, but Victoria Zinny would be another example. She was still very young back then though. Another actress from this film, Margarita Lozano, died only last year. She plays the character of Ramona and I am not sure how common this name is in the Hispanic world (I always thought Ramon was more frequent), but here in Germany, it is actually one of the names from this area of the planet that is among the most common. Anyway, one who is of course sadly no longer with us is writer and director Luis Buñuel as he was already over the age of 60 when he made this movie. It is maybe even among hist most seen at this point and the tendency is rising. I am baffled by the film&#39;s truly high imdb rating of 8.1. I cannot say that I liked it this much, even if it had its moments, but they were far from frequent enough. Not even close. Buñuel actually won the Palme d&#39;Or for his work here and it was nothing that happened too often for his films, even if it was a split victory. In general, he was more successful with the Oscars, even if there his triumphs were also &quot;only&quot; nominations for either screenplays or in the foreign language category, but those successes followed in the 1970s then and those were still a bit away. You can surely say that the movies who he is most known for nowadays, if we ignore the &quot;eye-opening&quot; from very early, are from the final stages of his career and latter stages of his life. I am sure that if death had not gotten in the way, he would have had ideas and material for many decades to come, but oh well. This film here can be seen a bit as part of a trilogy that stars Fernando Rey as the title character and he expresses his interest in women that are almost too young to be his daughter. You will find Catherine Deneuve and Carole Bouquet in films with said background and these other two films got made much later and are this also in color. The one with Deneuve for example is from almost a decade later and the other one that does not carry the name of the female protagonist in the title is even more recent. But I guess there is more of a parallel to the Deneuve film with this one here, not only because of the title and yes I am aware that one film is in color and the other in black-and-white, but what unites them is the trio of writers of course. I already mentioned Buñuel and the other two writers are also the exact same for these films. Julio Alejandro was Buñuel&#39;s collaborator on the screenplay and he was a successful film writer in Spain in his own right and extremely prolific and Benito Pérez Galdós is the one who wrote the base material in the 19th century already and he died in 1920 and thus did not live to see what Buñuel did with his works. I am still curious if he would have liked it. But yeah, as for Pérez Galdós, many of his works got taken to the screen afterwards, even if Buñuel&#39;s adaptations are probably among the most known of them all there. No surprise at all. I was actually wondering if this and &quot;Tristana&quot; were based on the same novel maybe, but I doubt it. The plots are too different. Maybe the original writer just loved similar backgrounds or so for some of his books. If we look at something completely different now, I don&#39;t think I said already that this is not a particularly long movie. If we look at Buñuel&#39;s full feature releases from the 1960s and 1970s especially, then this is even among the shortest of them all at slightly over 1.5 hours. One crucial difference to the two other films in which Rey&#39;s character pursues young women is that he took his own life halfway into the movie. That came unexpected I must say, especially after seeing the two aforementioned films before that. I did not watch chronologically. Afterwards then, it is Rey&#39;s character&#39;s son who takes over as the male lead here and the actor is Francisco Rabal I think. He is even credited ahead of Rey in here, maybe because his character lives in the end. And he was also more into Ramona in this film and not into Viridiana. Ramona also liked him, so there is even a happy ending in a way romantically. Nothing you get too often with Buñuel. What you are also not getting here and get in other Buñuel films, especially in the 1970s, was the element of absurdity and that the film did not have to make total sense from a perspective of realism. This is a pretty realistic film. It is also a cruel movie as eventually Viridiana&#39;s altruist visions and ideas are shattered when she is almost raped by one of the struggling humans that she wanted to support and protect. Very sobering ending, but thanks to Rabal&#39; character&#39;s wit in this scene she is still saved and so is he, who himself was in quite a predicament there. What is sobering about all this is not only what almost happens, but basically that they have to bring these struggling humans back to their most basic instincts to kill each other in order to be saved. To commit gruesome murder for example. This was one of the most brutal scenes of the entire movie, even if it was not super graphic. Clearly, Buñuel was eager to get the film accepted and not banned in big countries. About the ban from the Vatican, he probably did not care too much. On the contrary, this was a controversy that maybe even helped him in getting people curious about the movie and have more people see it, so the Vatican was not doing itself/themselves a favor there you can say. Before I get to the end of my review, I will still post some brainstorming here: In other Buñuel films you see animals die as some kind of foreshadowing and this could have been the case here too, but I do not really remember. We see an insect almost down on one occasion, but it is saved in fact. Maybe Buñuel did without this kind of aspect here because the male protagonist&#39;s death is brought on him by his own hand? I can only speculate. Speaking of animals, we also see how a cow is milked and somebody fills a glass like that to drink it immediately afterwards or give it to somebody else to drink it. I mean why not. Some slightly memorable scenes we got here. Overall, I liked the film &quot;Tristana&quot; more than &quot;Viridiana&quot;, but in terms of the protagonists I would give the edge (and it is not even close) to Pinal over Deneuve in terms of how likable their characters are and also in terms of looks and performances. Means quite something as I am usually not into blondes. Bouquet I would rank ahead of the two though and the other actress from the Bouquet film maybe between the duo. This is pretty much it then. The character of Viridiana is a bit on the memorable side for me, but the film surrounding her isn&#39;t really, even if I like it a little more now after thinking about it. Perhaps on rewatch I can be more generous with my rating. As of now, I give it a negative recommendation and thumbs-down and it is one of the weaker films I saw during this Buñuel retrospective unfortunately. It is not a failure or a mess, but also simply does not have enough memorable moments for me. Then again, I am more critical on Buñuel&#39;s stuff from the 1960s than what he did afterwards, so it is maybe not a huge surprise. And to be honest, the film looks even older than 1960s I would say. Had I read this to be a film from the mid1940s, I would have believed it too. I still thought all this could turn out better given the incredibly high imdb rating, which thus makes it a truly overrated movie. It probably also did not help for me that Rey here plays a fairly unlikable character. I mean what was with that scene when he drugged the almost angel-like Viridiana by putting some sedative or so into her drink. I suggest you watch something else (by Buñuel). Not recommended.

User reviews

Viridiana

Yawn

I really don't like this guy

Unique Story

Shattered illusions for everybody involved, sadly also for those watching this movie

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