A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #332: Luis Buñuel’s Virid­i­ana.

Virid­ian comes from the Latin viridis, mean­ing green, but color has lit­tle to do with Buñuel’s Virid­i­ana. He took the name from the life of a St. Virid­i­ana [Feb 1^st], but that is tan­gen­tial to the action of the film. It is almost eas­ier to talk about what this film isn’t than about what it is, an influ­ence which stems, I think, from Buñuel’s asso­ci­a­tions with sur­re­al­ism and his own under­stat­edly inter­est­ing per­son­al­ity. I’ve seen Un chien andalou and Las Hur­des, but this is the first of Buñuel’s work that I’ve seen with an obvi­ous nar­ra­tive struc­ture. The film itself is above aver­age, but it becomes more inter­est­ing when placed within the con­text of its pro­duc­tion and distribution.

This won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was then promptly denounced by the Vat­i­can, sub­se­quently banned in Spain [after being approved by the Franco’s fas­cist cen­sors] and all kinds of other hoopla. This is a film where many things are fetishized, a lit­tle girl’s legs, the novice Viridiana’s legs, women’s cloth­ing; and other things are merely day to day tongue-​in-​cheek comedic mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tions, jump-​rope, cloth, music and art. Above all, Virid­i­ana is a com­edy in the old­est sense of the word. The main char­ac­ters never prac­tice what they preach, are blind to their own faults, and seem dri­ven more by instinct than will or rea­son. The blas­phe­mous aspects of the film seem to me to be less blas­phe­mous and rather more con­cerned with point­ing out struc­tural inad­e­qua­cies in the rela­tion­ship between real life and spir­i­tual life.

Buñuel appears to be mak­ing pointed com­men­taries about the land he returned to after a 20 year exile and the world that could creat fas­cist Spain. I don’t think the com­men­taries are inten­tional, because the film is not preachy, but there are unavoid­able reflec­tions of Buñuel’s per­sonal world­view echo­ing through­out. His dis­taste for modes of con­trol is quite evi­dent in Virid­i­ana. Virid­i­ana her­self tries to con­trol and direct the wel­fare of the beg­gars that she takes in, but does more to restrict than allow the beg­gars room to live. Sim­i­larly Don Jaime and Don Jorge’s attempts to con­trol the women in their lives show the empti­ness of the men’s lives and a pos­si­ble weak­ness in the cul­ture of Spain at the time [that’s just a guess]. The con­trol cri­tique is most obvi­ous in the reli­gious aspects, and in the end it seems that the mes­sage is: Accept and revel in the messi­ness of life instead of try­ing to con­trol it.

Almost an anar­chic mes­sage and cer­tainly a sur­re­al­ist one.

• Cri­te­rion Essay by Michael Wood
• Objects of Desire: Con­ver­sa­tions with Luis Buñuel [If you’re will­ing to drop 6 bucks to read this inter­view with Buñuel about Virid­i­ana and other films]
• Senses of Cin­ema arti­cle on Luis Buñuel and Viridiana