Cinemes Verdi to screen 'Viridiana', a classic film by Luis Buñuel
This 1961 production was censored by the Franco regime and starred Silvia Pinal, Francisco Rabal and Fernando Rey.
On 14 March, the Thursday Essentials cycle at Cinemes Verdi will be hosting the screening of Viridiana. This controversial film by Luis Buñuel, a Mexican-Spanish coproduction that premiered in 1961, was labelled impious and blasphemous by the Vatican and the Franco regime, and was banned in Spain. It was screened amid controversy at the Cannes Festival but won a Palme d’Or.
Viridiana is loosely based on Halma, a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós, and tells the story of a young woman who goes to visit her uncle before taking her vows and retreating from the world in a convent. The girl’s resemblance to his late wife drives her uncle to drug her with the intention of raping her and forcing her to marry him, though he is unable to bring himself to do so and hangs himself in remorse. Prevented from leaving by the police, Viridiana decides to renounce her vows and instead stays at the house and invites a group of beggars to occupy one of the outbuildings. Chaos ensues and scenes like the one depicting the paupers posing in drunken squalor around a dinner table in a parody of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper did nothing to endear the film to the Spanish censors of the time.
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