Viridiana's Jubilee
On May 17, 1961, exactly 60 years ago, Luis Buñuel's film "Viridiana" premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival.
At the Cannes Film Festival, the film "Viridiana" (tied with the French film "Une aussi longue absence (The Long Absence)" directed by Henri Colpi) was awarded the Palme d'Or. And this prize turned out to be the only festival award for the film, which many film critics call the pinnacle of Luis Buñuel's creativity. The reason for this is as follows.
As you know, after the defeat of the Republicans in the civil war and the establishment of the Franco dictatorship in Spain, Luis Bunuel was forced to emigrate to Mexico. During his 20-plus years in Mexico, Bunuel created a number of film masterpieces, in particular, such as "Los Olvidados", "El", "Nazarin" and others. These films brought worldwide fame to both Buñuel and Mexican cinema.
Naturally, the overseas successes of the Spanish director could not but cause some jealousy among the Spanish authorities. Buñuel was asked to direct the film in Spain. It was proposed that the script for the future film to be based on the novel by Benito Perez Galdos, a classic of Spanish literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who is as popular in Spain as Dickens in England, Balzac in France, Tolstoy in Russia. The choice of Perez Galdos was not accidental, since the film "Nazarin", which enjoyed great success, was also based on the work of this writer.
There is a version that General Franco himself was the direct customer of the film. Maybe not. But the fact that Buñuel was offered a fee 4 times higher than his usual fee speaks in favor of this version.
The screenplay for "Viridiana", based on the novel "Halma" by Perez Galdos, was co-written by Luis Buñuel and Julio Alejandro. Julio Alejandro can be called a comrade-in-arms of Buñuel, since he was also forced to emigrate to Mexico after the defeat of the Republicans in the civil war. In Mexico he wrote scripts for several films by Buñuel, in particular, the already mentioned "Nazarin".
The Spanish censors carefully studied the script of the future film, made several adjustments to it and ... and watched the finished film together with everyone at the Cannes Film Festival. And a scandal erupted: the Spanish authorities saw in the film propaganda of incest, suicide, the Swedish family, sacrilege, etc. And banned the film. The ban was in effect until 1977 and was lifted only after the death of Francisco Franco, which occurred in 1975. And Pope John XXIII declared the film blasphemous and banned it forever and ever.
Luis Buñuel himself was excommunicated. In short, under such conditions, any participation of Luis Buñuel's film "Viridiana" in international film forums was excluded. Although the film was widely presented in the film distribution of many countries. But not in the USSR.
After such a "hot reception", Luis Buñuel again went to Mexico, and then to France, where he created several more film masterpieces, in particular, "Belle de Jour", "Tristana", "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie)", "Le fantôme de la liberté (The Phantom of Liberty)", "Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire)". Buñuel died in a foreign land, in Mexico.
While the top of the Catholic Church, coupled with the dictatorial regime of Spain, were indignant about the film by Luis Buñuel, film critics around the world scattered rave reviews in his address. Even the ever-grumpy Bosley Crowther of The New York Times notes in his review as the absolute merits of the picture: "We sense all the way through this drama of the shocking education of this girl in the realities of passion and the grossness of most of mankind a stinging, unmerciful sarcasm directed at the piously insulated mind and a strong strain of guarded criticism of social conditions in Spain....The most powerful stuff in his film are the macabre scenes of these people showing how vicious and contemptible they are. They snivel, cheat, steal, abuse one another, ostracize and brutalize one who has a foul disease and finally cut loose in a wild carouse that fairly wrecks the place.. ....Whether Señor Buñuel means his picture as a reflection of all people or just the people of Spain is not clear nor, indeed, is it essential." True, Crowther would not have been Crowther if he had not added a spoonful of bile to his review: "It is an ugly, depressing view of life. And, to be frank about it, it is a little old-fashioned, too."
American film critic guru Roger Ebert gave the film the highest rating - 4 stars - and included it in his list of "Great Movies". In his 2010 review, he noted: "The film is deliberate and controlled. .... It is elegantly photographed; each shot conveys something concrete and specific.... It makes no clear and precise statement, but instead conveys Buñuel's notion that our base natures are always waiting to pounce."
According to the Russian film critic Stanislav Zelvensky, “the eternal misanthrope and anticlerical Bunuel here is as cruel as possible, with a minimum of expressive means, in a strict, much more classicistic manner than in his subsequent French works, he gives the world mark "F". With a backhand slap in the face, he responds to Italian neo-realism, which was not yet abundant in those years, with its cult of honest poor people and holy little people, presenting holiness as exalted naivety, and poverty as a corrupting vice, which will make you not only cling to the hand of the giver, but also chew it with appetite."
And one of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev, noted in his review: “Critics most often emphasized the director's anticlerical and even anti-religious pathos, although for him the protest against the authority of the church and religion was not an end in itself. It would simply be impossible to tell about the stay of the young nun Viridiana - a kind soul, a sacrificial nature, almost an angel in the flesh - in that “world” where cruelty, greed, lust and general absurdity rule the ball, if not to show it permeated through with religious prejudices, blasphemous customs and blood-macabre rituals Spanish reality. The author turned out to be a great realist, telling a kind of "Gospel of Viridiana", the life of a modern saint who was insulted and reviled by ruthless and rude people, like Jesus Christ almost two millennia before."
Alexander Fedorov characterized the film in an extremely lapidary manner, calling it "a parable about the futility of efforts of charity and mercy in the world of cruelty, vice and intolerance".
Modern moviegoers around the world have highly appreciated Luis Buñuel's film "Viridiana". 78% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. Taking this into account and the above, the rating of Luis Buñuel's film "Viridiana" according to FilmGourmand was 8.707, making it 243rd in the Golden Thousand.
