Viridiana Film Difficulty Ranking: 4
Who said you couldn’t make fun of a dictatorship whilst living in under a dictatorship? Luis Bunuel proves us wrong by returning to Spain to deliberately make this film that satirizes Franco. Would anyone dare do this today?
Check out this sleepwalking scene for a mere taste of the controversy.
Why Watch Viridiana?
- Get to know one of the dark side of one of the most famous directors of the 20th century: Luis Bunuel
- To see a film that savagely pokes fun at Spain under Franco, dictator from 1939 until 1973 (the film was banned in Spain until his death in 1975)
- For a ‘Last Supper’ scene which got it banned in the Vatican
- If you like laughing at human nature and the absurdity of life
The Breakdown
We meet Viridiana in the courtyard of her convent talking with her mother superior. She is told to go visit her uncle before she takes her vows to become a nun. A strange request as she hardly knows him. In a Bunuel film, this can only mean trouble.
Sure enough after Viridiana arrives at her uncle’s house, she is fetishised by Bunuel (meaning she is made into the object of her uncle’s sexual fetish). Bunuel shows her taking off her stockings and nun frock in one scene and has the uncle’s maid spy on her through a key hole.
Bunuel makes it even weirder when the uncle asks Viridiana to wear his dead wife’s wedding dress (she died on her wedding night). Sure enough she looks just like her.
Bunuel’s depiction of the weird uncle is a satire of the aristocracy under Franco. He paints them as perverted and stuck in tradition (his house is full of old artifacts and looks like Mrs.Faversham’s from Dickens’ Great Expectations).
But Bunuel does not just satirize the aristocracy. Everyone is a victim in this film!
Conclusion
Bunuel has a pretty dark view of humanity. No one in this film gets away without being made fun of from the creepy old uncle to the group of beggars Viridiana takes care of. Even Viridiana is made fun of with her saintly actions.
One scene which perfectly depicts Bunuel’s world view is a scene in which Jorge (the uncle’s son) buys a dog that is being dragged along on a lead under a running horse cart. He buys the dog to free it. However, as he walks off with the dog, he does not see another cart drive past with another dog being dragged along under it.