Among all the directors who have large chunks of their filmography included in the Criterion Collection, Luis Bunuel stands out as a rare exception whose work at the end of his career serves as his representation in that formidable library of "important classic and contemporary films." Usually it's the other way around. Criterion has a noticeable predilection for sifting through the early films of great directors, when they tend to be more daring, less commercially inclined and at their most fearlessly experimental. I can only think of Max Ophuls as a peer in this regard, in that his last cluster of films, starting with his return to Europe in La Ronde up through his finale Lola Montes, got the Criterion treatment, rather than his initial efforts made decades earlier. But then again, Ophuls passed away prematurely, when he was only 55 years old. Luis Bunuel, by way of comparison, was already past his 61st birthday when Viridiana made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, a remarkably late point in life's journey for a director to finally produce films deemed Criterion-worthy.
As Jean Renoir once famously scripted, "everyone has their reasons," and I'm sure that there are numerous plausible explanations as to why none of Bunuel's previous works have (as yet) made their way into Criterion's vaults. Un chien Andalou and L'age d'or are as notorious and emblematic as any films of their era, but they're widely available and highly familiar already, limiting the prospects for a substantial return on investment, unless Criterion was able to come up with some kind of new, unique angle on them that eluded previous distributors of these art house classics. And as for Bunuel's substantial and complicated string of films shot under varying conditions and producers during his long sojourn in Mexico from the late 1940s until the end of the 1950s, I can only imagine how daunting the challenge must be to sort out the layers of rights issues, access to original source materials and development of suitable supplemental features that swarm around such diverse potential Criterion (or Eclipse) entries as Los Olvidados, Susana, Mexican Bus Ride, El, El Bruto, Wuthering Heights, Robinson Crusoe, The Criminal Life of Archibaldo Cruz, The River and Death and Nazarin. Even the fact that quite sufficient editions of Death in the Garden and The Young One can be readily obtained by American fans of Bunuel hardly resolves the larger problem of what exactly we should make of the discrete charms exerted by those obscure objects that he produced in that period commonly referred to as his "exile." (As if simply living in Mexico implied some kind of substantial loss on Bunuel's part - I rather think of it as a loss on the side of those living in Europe and the USA at the time... though it remains regrettable that so many wonderful Bunuel films from that decade are still so hard to find in quality presentations.)
So in order to get an adequate grasp on just what it was that Bunuel achieved when Viridiana was finally unleashed upon the world in the spring of 1961, I've spent the last few weeks (by far the longest silent stretch on this blog since January 2009) watching as many of Bunuel's 1950s films as I could get my hands on. And it has been quite a rewarding experience, illuminating my understanding of what the great Spanish director had to work through in order to obtain his ultimate freedom to make the movies that would bring his career to such a glorious climax over the next two decades. Working with multiple producers and a panoply of actors from Mexico, Europe and the USA, across a variety of genres, taking assignments in a seemingly haphazard manner on projects of sometimes dubious potential, Bunuel's run of Mexican films stands as a monument to sheer artistic determination when it seems like the rest of the world could hardly care less. I won't (because I can't, and shouldn't) take the time to provide mini-reviews of those films here, so let it simply suffice to say that any energy expenditure that results in greater familiarity with Bunuel's output from this era will be amply rewarded. And I can only hope that whether it's months or years in the future, I will someday be able to look back with satisfaction in the knowledge that Criterion did what it had to do to bring at least a sampling of Bunuel's 1950s oeuvre into the popular discourse generated by a selection of these titles, whatever format they finally settle upon in order to do so.
OK, then let's set all that to the side and talk about Viridiana. It's a gorgeous, heartbreaking, entrancing, voluptuous, wondrous and vibrantly liberating film.
For anyone who's bothered to check it out, Viridiana's production history is already pretty well known: at long last, Bunuel was allowed by Franco's quasi-fascist regime to come on back home after decades away, in order to produce some kind of home-grown trophy film that would help install Spain back into the broader European cultural community of nations. Without sufficiently grappling with Bunuel's essentially subversive point of view, the Spanish authorities allowed him free reign to subtly violate their taboos (beyond their ability to detect a priori) and in the process reinserted him among the preeminent critics of conventional bourgeois Western morality. It's quite an amazing development, when considered in the abstract, since Bunuel was already so conveniently tucked away in Central American obscurity and presumably positioned to be generally ignored for the rest of his life. But his belated re-entry to the European stage, coupled with the alarming artistic upheavals about to be unleashed as the 1960s truly got underway, let that particular genie out of the bottle, never to be stopped up again.
As for the story itself... oh my, there's so much in Viridiana to unpack, to explore, to commentate upon. Maybe I've already worn out your patience leading up to this point, but let me just say that Fernando Rey, Silvia Pinal and the cast of lesser lights that Luis gathered here unleashed enough raw supple energy to fuel another decade or more worth of uproar, not that Luis was done with generating it himself by any means. But they did indeed kick off Bunuel's final phase with admirable gusto, as the lecherous conflicted uncle and the virginal idealistic innocent, respectively - pitting fundamental archetypes against each other in a compelling and humorous scenario, at least until the middle-aged man hangs himself in a lustfully frustrated fit of pique.
As a narrative, Viridiana is delightfully base in it nature. A young novice, just on the brink of stating her final vows of renunciation, is compelled by her Mother Superior to pay one last visit, rather against her wishes, to an indulgent uncle whose generous bankrolling has enabled the young woman to pursue her ambition of leaving the cruel corrupt world once and for all. We never really learn what drives Viridiana toward this end, but it's apparent enough that a fearful reluctance to be tainted by sin and lust lurks just below the surface. She's a beautiful young woman who's been repulsed by her discovery of masculine intentions toward someone as alluring and innocent as her. Even her most solemn vows and protestations, as earnest and heartfelt as she's capable of producing, turn out to be not quite enough to secure her virtue.
Meanwhile, Bunuel's camera lasciviously slithers around Don Jaime's estate, capturing small snapshots of petty domestic melodrama and potentially embarrassing fetishistic kinks well before we've reached Viridiana's halfway point and its irrevocable shift away from the intergenerational erotic entanglements and toward a supposedly more spiritual perspective as Viridiana is freed up to follow the path of discipleship that she believes to be her true calling. Don Jaime/Fernando Rey exits the scene before even forty minutes have passed, but we'll see plenty more of him, in various manifestations of character and Bunuelian alter-ego, over the next 16 years so don't worry about that. To fill his void for now, Viridiana must reckon with a more virile and single-minded pursuer, Don Jaime's cousin Jorge, who arrives in the nick of time to inherit the estate and size up whatever goods are worth taking into his possession. Embued with a sense of entitlement befitting young aristocrats, Jorge patiently bides his time as Viridiana chases down one last noble ideal, feeding and sheltering a motley crew of beggars she's gathered from the nearby streets in order to fulfill the vows she's spoken in unacknowledged silence, outside the formality of church or convent.
Small pebbles of provocation are gathered and heaped, piled high enough to eventually amount to an outrage impossible to ignore in 1961 for anyone responsible for speaking on behalf of repressive authoritarian regimes. Dogs on leashes tied to axles, switchblade crucifixes, trash trove attics filled with the detritus of a dying generation, the elemental simplicity of a cat pouncing upon a mouse... Bunuel understands the cumulative effect of these gestures, so innocuous on paper when the script is submitted to the censors but unmistakably infuriating when strung together on film and viewed by the uptight hypocrites whose tyrannical fear renders them incapable of recognizing the lighter qualities of Bunuel's observant eye.
But just in case the powers that be are too dense or too bedazzled by whatever artistic reputation or sophisticated panache Bunuel had accumulated by that point in time, he leaves no doubt about his intentions of sabotage and insubordination over the course of Viridiana's final fifteen minutes, a sprawling beggar's banquet that secured the film's lasting notoriety. The mocking sacrilegious spectacle culminates in a burlesque reenactment of the Last Supper presided over by a blind and bestial messiah accompanied by the strains of G.F. Handel's most recognized masterpiece.
Upon entering the chaotic scene, Jorge and Viridiana quickly realize that however sincere her intentions were to serve and empower the poor, things have gotten much too far out of hand for simple purity of heart to prevail. Brute force needs to reassert itself for some semblance of order to take hold. The crown of thorns must be burnt, Viridiana's hair has to be let down, cares need to be shaken away. The deck requires shuffling, and Luis Bunuel is back at the table, ready to deal for all the world to see, at long last getting the hard-earned recognition that a sliding cloud over the face of the moon and a quick slice of blade across eyeball first won him lo those many decades ago.
Next: Last Year at Marienbad