Critics reviews

Whereas Buñuel sacrificed a clear message in his early films for visual anarchy, with Viridiana Buñuel brilliantly joined meaning and madness. It must be stressed that the brilliance of Viridiana depends largely on its attack on Franco's Spain—apart from that the film can be understood in a very different manner... Beyond its immediate social context Viridiana is mercilessly pessimistic concerning human nature, and much of the film's bleakness lies in its lack of dimensionality.

The overall beauty of Buñuel's work always lies in his malleability. He doesn't side against morality, he merely posits that it's an inconvenience in the pursuit of pleasure. And maybe some of us prefer to be possessed. In casting Francisco Rabal as Jorge, the illegitimate son and Viridiana's foil, Buñuel hits a note that few directors ever manage successfully: he creates a monstrous male who sustains desirability in spite of never showing "real" virtue.

As ever with Buñuel, religion and lust are one (Bach and rock inflame desire equally, and a habit is as arousing as a bustier), and the devil is in the details: the bare feet of a girl jumping rope, a burning crown of thorns, and a pocketknife concealed in a cross join with the anarchic doings to convey his sardonic world view.

Buñuel made the wondrously sacrilegious Viridiana in Franco's Spain when the dictator's censors must have been dozing. After almost half a century, it still retains its brilliance and humanity.

The film's making and arrival at Cannes have become the stuff of legend: Its satire of both greed and piety attacked the primary totems of a Catholic, Fascist country--Franco's Spain; the film was banned upon completion and a print had to be smuggled out of the country for its premiere. But Buñuel is not among the greatest of all filmmakers simply for courting controversy. Each of his formal decisions, even when seemingly anarchic, reveals a piercing worldview.

While Buñuel, possibly the cinema's key master of political incorrectness, is certainly interested in challenging his heroine's sense of virtue with the beggars' orgy, he never stoops to scorn or ridicule. When Robert Altman in M*A*S*H copied Buñuel's Last Supper gag, there's some form of mockery that seemingly got added to the mix, but it's absent from the original, where nothing's ever that simple, even when it feels fairly elemental.