Viridiana
Director: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Julio Alejandro, Luis Buñuel
Stars: Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal
Runtime: 90 minutes
Plot: Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.
Review: A variation on an ancient theme that well-intended charity can often be badly misplaced by innocent, pious people. That is the obvious moral that forms in this grim and tumorous tale of a beautiful young religious novice who gets into an unholy mess when she gives up her holy calling to try to atone for a wrong she has done. Señor Buñuel makes no bones about it. The most powerful stuff in his film are the macabre scenes of these people showing how vicious and contemptible they are. They snivel, cheat, steal, abuse one another, ostracize and brutalize one who has a foul disease and finally cut loose in a wild carouse that fairly wrecks the place. Played as a thundering obbligato to the milky generosity of the girl, these scenes carry the moralizing muscle and ironic punch of the film.
As usual in Señor Buñuel's pictures, the black-and-white photography is artful and true, and the English subtitles do politely by the sometimes coarse Spanish dialogue.
Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam
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