Viridiana
Spain 1961, 88 min.
Director: Luis Buñuel
Producers: Gustavo Alatriste (for Uninci Films 59)
Screenwriters: Luis Buñuel
Director of Photography: José F. Agayo
Music: Aleluja from Händel´s "Messiah"; S. F. Canet
Cast: Silvia Pinal, Francisco Rabal, Fernando Rey, Margareta Lozan, Victoria
Zinny, Teresa Rabal.
Awards: Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival (1961)
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Viridiana can be percieved as a mighty and effective film gesture that destroys
rigid ecclesiastical dogmas with the elegance and artfulness that is typical of Buñuel.
The story of the "fallen" Viridiana (the name as a potential allusion to virginity) is
a sharp confrontation of the spiritual and profane worlds. In the fight for the
heroine´s soul, the winner is, not surprisingly for the atheist Buñuel, not only
ordinary (slightly) sinful earthliness, but even a kind of perversion in the form of
undisguised polygamy...
The beautiful Viridiana leaves the convent just before taking the vow. She wants to
please her ill uncle before the door of the ecclesiastical institution shuts behind her.
As spectators, we are from the very beginning disturbed by constant and often skilfully
hidden destructions of the nun myth by means of the "non-conformist" Viridiana.
Viridiana as a sexual symbol: in the scene where she is sitting on the bed and slowly
taking off her black stockings or in the scene where she is milking the cow, touching
the udder clumsily and bashfully, just like a potential penis. Viridiana as a mystical
and unfathomable being: as a sleep-walker, she brings ashes to the bed, in the evening
she prays to the crown of thorns and spikes. That´s how the heroine is introduced to
us in a few opening scenes. The subsequent crucial turn of her soul is the work of
uncle Jaime.
Uncle Jaime lives in a big house and is obsessed by "reviving" his dead wife. She died
during the wedding night (the relation between death and virginity - she died as a
virgin or she was killed by the loss of virginity) and the uncle preserves her wedding
dress as a relic. His relationship to the dress is purely fetishist. Here Buñuel
alludes to the fetishist substance of Christian relics - another stab in the back of
the Church. Viridiana´s arrival literally materializes the uncle´s dreams. The young
girl resembles her aunt to an unbelievable extent and for Jaime she becomes a living
reincarnation of her. The last evening he makes her put on the wedding dress (a nun
dressed in the clothes of a dead) and "play" the dead wife. Then she really "dies",
having been put to sleep by the uncle. Motionless, she is lying in the bed, her hands
folded on her bosom - uncle Jaime leans down, kisses her and runs away. The climactic
scene of the film is pervaded with the taste and smell of forbidden fruit. The
beautiful nun Viridiana glowing with virginity and the uncle dominated by lust (i.e.
incest), he kisses the etherized and so to say dead girl (i.e. necrophilia) dressed in
the clothes of his dead wife (i.e. fetishism). It makes us think of some scenes from An
Andalusian Dog - the fetishist worshipping of the lover´s clothes and above all the
homogeneity of death and sexual desire.
The following morning after Viridiana´s departure the uncle hangs himself - it might be
because of the grief after the object of his desire has left, or because he feels
embarassed by the shameful situation, or because he is frustrated by the
non-fulfillment of the process of sexual intercourse. Viridiana realizes her share of
guilt (possibly the discovery of eros inside herself) and devotes herself to
repentance. Like a saint she opens up her house to the outcast, ill and crippled and
tries to fulfill the model of an ideal society with them.
The praiseworthy plan turn into complete anarchy as Viridiana leaves the house to visit
the town. Her "sheep" organize a perverse celebration of their return among humans. A
worm-eaten arch of repulsive imperfection, aggressive hatred and filthy exuberance
extends over the whole scene. The poor and ill not as objects of God´s mercy and
sympathy, but as beasts - bloodthirsty, forever damned and evil (here once more Buñuel
goes against the wall of general awareness or collective memory). The insane night
culminates with an attempt to rape Viridiana herself, who is saved by the dead uncle´s
son Jorge.
The second attempt to take away virginity devoted to God is the second and final turn
of Viridiana´s mind. The way to earthliness (the earthliness by which she was attacked
twice) is at its end. One evening, the fervent nun and then fervent Christian enters
Jorge and his lover´s room with her hair loose. Her crown of thorns is burning and
turns into a round disc. A disc with modern music that creates, together with a set of
playing cards, the atmosphere of an evening party. Two women and a man are playing
cards and the camera slowly goes away. The loss of virginity will happen without our
presence...
"Of all my works, The Golden Age and Viridiana are the only films on
which I could work with the feeling of absolute creative freedom." L.B.
"In Viridiana I tried to express certain erotic and religious obsessions of my
childhood." L.B.
Plus:
Viridiana was the name of a little known Spanish saint.
The climactic scene of the film was originally inspired by Luis Buñuel´s dream in
which, thanks to narcotics, he made love to the Spanish queen.
The key object of the film is the skipping rope. The maid´s little daughter jumps
over it, uncle Jaime hangs himself with it and during the attempt at rape, the
monstrous agressor is tied with it .
The film features music by Mozart (Requiem during the "reconstruction" of the
wedding night) and Händel (Alleluia from the Messiah during the leper´s dance). There
are also allusions to paintings by Bosch, Breughel, Goya and Leonardo (with her lap,
the wretch "photographs" other beggars, who are gathered around the table as during the
Last Supper).
The original moderate version of the end (Viridiana knocks at her cousin´s door, it
opens and than closes again) was refused by Spanish censorship, to which the director
reacted by shooting a much more amoral version than the first one.
In Spain the film provoked a scandal comparable only to that caused by The Golden
Age and was banned immediately. The director general of Spanish Film was dismissed
for having taken over the award that Viridiana won in Cannes.
[ translation: Sabina Poláková ]
Links:
IMDb - record in the internet film database
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