Viridiana

Before taking her final vows as a nun, Viridiana is told to pay a visit to her only living relative, an uncle who paid for her education and upkeep. This is Don Jaime, a recluse with a decaying mansion and estate who is looked after by a servant named Ramona. On her last night there, Don Jaime reveals that his wife (who looked exactly like Viridiana) died in their bed on their wedding night and begs Viridiana to wear the wedding dress and veil that he has lovingly preserved. After drugging her coffee, he carries her to the bed and is about to rape her when he regains control of himself. In the morning he says that she cannot now return to the convent because she is no longer a virgin, but she packs her things and flees. Although he calls out that it was a lie and begs her to stay, she is waiting at a bus stop when the police find her and take her back to the mansion. Don Jaime has hanged himself from a tree, leaving a will that divides his assets between Viridiana and an illegitimate son named Jorge.

Deciding that she cannot now live as a nun, Viridiana resolves instead to help those in need and collects vagrants, who she houses and feeds in the outbuildings. Jorge arrives with Lucía, a girl friend, and throws himself into renovating the neglected land and buildings, as well as starting a clandestine relationship with Ramona. Bored by rustic isolation and jealous of Viridiana, who Jorge would like to add to his conquests, Lucía leaves. One night when Jorge and Viridiana have gone to town on business with Ramona, the beggars break into the mansion. Initially they just pry and pocket things but then decide to stage a banquet, complete with group photograph to the sound of the Hallelujah Chorus in a parody of The Last Supper, which descends into a drunken orgy of sex and destruction. When the owners return, most of the beggars flee but two of the men capture Jorge and Viridiana, tying him up while one starts raping Viridiana at knife-point. As the other waits his turn, Jorge persuades him with cash to kill the rapist. The police arrive, fetched by Ramona.

A few nights later Ramona and Jorge are playing cards in his bedroom to hit music[lower-alpha 1] when they see Viridiana and he asks her in to make up a threesome. As if drugged, she walks in to her fate.

While Viridiana is regarded by many modern critics as a masterpiece, its initial reception was not so uniformly positive. It was sent by the Spanish cinematographic authority to the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or, but then L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, described the film as "blasphemous", and the government of Francisco Franco banned its release in Spain. According to executive producer Pere Portabella, Spanish authorities tried to have the original negative burned, and it only survived because it was with a foreign company who had done some post-production work.[4] The film was not released in Spain until 1977, two years after Franco's death, when Buñuel was 77 years old.[5] For his part, Buñuel said he "didn't deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am".[5]

The film won the Belgian Film Critics Association's Grand Prix, but Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote:

Luis Buñuel is presenting a variation on an ancient theme in his new Spanish film, Viridiana, which came to the Paris yesterday. The theme is that well-intended charity can often be badly misplaced by innocent, pious people. Therefore, beware of charity. ... It is an ugly, depressing view of life. And, to be frank about it, it is a little old-fashioned, too. His format is strangely literary; his symbols are obvious and blunt, such as the revulsion of the girl toward milking or the display of a penknife built into a crucifix. And there is something just a bit corny about having his bums doing their bacchanalian dance to the thunder of the "Hallelujah Chorus."[6]

In 2012, Viridiana was voted the 37th greatest film of all time in the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound directors' poll; it placed 110th in the critics' poll.[7]

The film was released by The Criterion Collection in the United States and by Madman Entertainment in Australia (on the "Directors Suite" label) and New Zealand.

• Silvia Pinal, Pere Portabella, Juan Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière speak about the film at 35 mm de cine español
• Viridiana at IMDb
• Viridiana at AllMovie
• Viridiana: The Human Comedy an essay by Michael Wood at the Criterion Collection
• Viridiana at Rotten Tomatoes