New Restoration

“Buñuel burst upon the ​’60s like a resurrected Victorian novelist steeped in violent depravity and unabashedly obvious symbols … [An] imperishable landmark of personal cinema.”

Andrew Sarris, Village Voice

After an exile that lasted over two decades, Luis Buñuel was convinced by actor Silvia Pinal and her husband, producer Gustavo Alatriste, to return to Spain to direct a film. (Buñuel: ​“I had a reasonable budget for once.”) The result was the scandalous Viridiana, one of the surrealist director’s great masterpieces. The fascist Franco government’s attempts to suppress the movie failed; prints of Viridiana reached Cannes where it won the Palme d’or, the first Spanish film so honoured. Pinal is featured in the title role as a young nun who pays a visit to her widowed uncle (Fernando Rey), only to discover that his feelings for her go beyond the avuncular, and his sexual predilections run to the bizarre. Among the film’s outrages is a parody of da Vinci’s The Last Supper; the Vatican denounced Viridiana as an insult to Christianity. Buñuel replied: ​“I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am.”

In Spanish with English subtitles

“Viridiana​’s unblinking vision of a world without true innocence isn’t misanthropic, but powerfully, unapologetically humane—a black comedy without pity or judgment.”

Adam Nayman, The Ringer

“To fascists and bigots this is obviously a very offensive film; to most other people it will have the insolence of genius.”

Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer
Media