Viridiana

While its so-called "blasphemies" have been tamed by the passage of time, Luis Buñuel's Viridiana (1961) remains playfully provocative. Inspired by a minor saint and an erotic fantasy about making love to the Queen of Spain after drugging her, Buñuel combined these elements into a characteristically daring scenario about Viridiana (Silvia Pinal), a young woman about to become a nun, who leaves her convent to visit the decaying estate of her uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), an eccentric widower who's immediately taken with Viridiana's close resemblance to his dead wife. Jaime's aborted attempt to seduce Viridiana (and his subsequent suicide) sets the film's second half in motion, as Viridiana assuages her guilt by turning Don Jaime's estate into a haven for the dispossessed—quite literally a "beggar's banquet" that culminates in one of the most indelible images in all of Buñuel's oeuvre: a staged recreation of da Vinci's "The Last Supper," with a cast of itinerant peasants as "disciples." Viridiana is scathingly critical of Catholic hypocrisy and dictator Francisco Franco's Spain (Don Jaime's estate is a direct reflection of the country's slide during Franco's rule from 1939-1975), and its allegorical content was not lost on Spanish authorities, who banned the film (it wasn't shown in Spain until 1977) after it won the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This newly restored, high-definition digital transfer of Viridiana impressively maintains Criterion's exacting standards of audiovisual quality, with deep blacks and richly detailed clarity. DVD extras include new (2006) video interviews with Pinal and author and film scholar Richard Porton, warmly revealing excerpts from the 1964 French TV series "Cineastes of Our Times" (featuring an interview with Buñuel), and a 30-page booklet with an essay on Viridiana by Princeton film scholar Michael Wood, as well as a generous interview excerpt from the book Objects of Desire: Conversations with Luis Buñuel. Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)