General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Viridiana

Viridiana is a 1961 black-and-white drama directed by Luis Buñuel, his first film made in Spain since he left the country in 1938, about a novice nun whose visit to her widowed uncle ends in his suicide and her failed attempt to redeem a household of beggars through charity.¹ It won the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, was denounced by the Vatican's newspaper, and was banned in Franco's Spain, where it could not be shown until 1977.²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Luis Buñuel, screenplay with Julio Alejandro³
Cast	Silvia Pinal (Viridiana), Fernando Rey (Don Jaime), Francisco Rabal (Jorge), Margarita Lozano (Ramona)³
Production	Spain and Mexico, 1961; 90 minutes, black and white; produced by UNINCI, Films 59, and Gustavo Alatriste³^•⁴
Cannes 1961	Palme d'Or, shared with Henri Colpi's Une aussi longue absence¹
Censorship	Denounced by L'Osservatore Romano; banned in Spain, its shooting permit revoked and Spanish copies destroyed²
Spanish release	First shown in Spain on 9 April 1977; recognized as a Spanish production by the Supreme Court in 1982⁴^•⁵
Literary source	A loose adaptation of a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós, Buñuel's second Galdós film after Nazarín (1958)⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is a young novice about to take her final vows when her uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), her only surviving relative and the man who paid for her education, asks her to visit his decaying country estate.⁷ Struck by her resemblance to his dead wife, who died in his arms on their wedding day, he has his housekeeper Ramona drug Viridiana's tea and plans to take advantage of her, but cannot go through with it; he then falsely tells her that he did, confesses the truth, and, refused forgiveness, hangs himself.¹

Inheriting the estate jointly with Don Jaime's illegitimate son Jorge (Francisco Rabal), Viridiana gathers a group of local beggars to live on the property, offering them shelter, work, and, in her words, "a little human warmth." Left alone in the house, the beggars hold a banquet that ends in drunken violence, and they stage a tableau mimicking Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, set to Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," with the leper wearing the dead aunt's corset and veil.¹ The film closes with Viridiana, her faith abandoned, joining a card game with Jorge and Ramona, the housekeeper.²^•¹⁰

Production and Buñuel's return to Spain

Buñuel had lived in exile since leaving Spain for the United States in 1938 and later settling in Mexico, where he became a citizen in 1949.¹ The project took shape in Mexico, where Juan Antonio Bardem had filmed Sonatas (1959); Bardem and Ricardo Muñoz Suay, of the production company UNINCI, proposed a film in Spain directed by Buñuel and produced with Pere Portabella and with Gustavo Alatriste, the Mexican producer married to Silvia Pinal.² Buñuel shot the film in the early months of 1961, and his return was controversial among exiles and opponents of the Franco regime; a widely circulated cartoon showed him handing the dictator a gift box that exploded in his face.¹

The script passed the censors with only some requested changes, including the ending, in which the novice was originally to enter Jorge's bedroom. Buñuel and Julio Alejandro revised it, and Buñuel later said the imposed ending improved the film, making the final image of Viridiana at the card table more emphatic.²^•⁸

The Cannes scandal and the ban

After completion, a second round of censorship demanded changes concerning religious objects and their use by Viridiana, and the film arrived in extremis at the 1961 Cannes Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or and the Prize of the Critics.² L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, denounced the film as blasphemous against the Catholic religion. The response in Spain was immediate: the regime banned the film, ordered copies destroyed, and dismissed Manuel Muñoz Fontán, the Director General of Cinematography and Theatre, who had traveled to Cannes to collect the prizes and was fired on his return by train through Irún.²

The film did not disappear. A negative was smuggled out of Spain hidden in a car bound for France, which allowed its international distribution, arranged widely by Alatriste.⁹^•² Buñuel himself remarked that Franco reportedly did not especially object to the film, saying that after all the dictator had seen, "the film must have seemed very innocent to him."¹

Later recognition

Viridiana premiered in Spain on 9 April 1977, after Franco's death, sixteen years after its Palme d'Or.⁴^•⁹ In 1982 the Spanish Supreme Court confirmed the exhibition and exploitation rights of UNINCI and authorized the credit of the Spanish producer on copies of the film, giving it the Spanish nationality the Franco government had never recognized.⁵ It remains, per Spanish press accounts, the only Spanish film to have won the Palme d'Or.⁹

The film marked Buñuel's return to international fame and opened his late golden period, followed by The Exterminating Angel (1962), Belle de jour (1967), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).¹^•⁷ Its beggars' banquet, staged as a Last Supper, was referenced in Robert Altman's *M*A*S*H* (1970), and critics have continued to treat the film as a central work of his career.⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1960s › Released 1960 to 1965

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?