Viridiana

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Luis Bunuel’s Viridiana.

It’s really 2 stories, or felt like it. The first story has young novice Viridiana, a few days from her final vows, being required to go visit her uncle, a rich landowner who has paid for her education. She hardly knows him, though, and doesn’t really want to go.

But the uncle is struck by V’s resemblance to his dead wife. It turns out she died on their wedding night, in her bridal gown, and it deeply affected the uncle. Now he becomes obsessed by V, and wants her to marry him. He does get her to agree to wear her aunt’s bridal gown.

V is deeply religious and innocent. She is shocked by her uncle’s proposal, repulsed, disgusted, and the old man only gets her to calm down by giving her drugged coffee. He then takes her to his bedroom, locks the door, and begins to undress her...

Next morning he begs her to stay. He tells her that he raped her while she was drugged, and so there’s no point in her going back to the convent now…

This only makes V more upset, which disturbs her uncle so that he begs the housemaid to talk to V. Tell her the truth, he asks, tell her that I meant to rape her, but I didn’t go through with it … she’s still pure. But the housekeeper is reluctant, so the Uncle talks again to V. V doesn’t know whether to believe him or not – I don’t know which of his stories to believe – and leaves for town still totally upset. When she is ready to board the bus back to the convent, she is halted by the police: her Uncle has hanged himself with the housekeeper’s daughter’s jump rope.

This ends the first story, which is much like the gothic melodramas Bunuel was doing in Mexico during the 50s. But then in this – his first film back in his native Spain – he goes on to spin a second story, one that looks forward to the social satires he would do in Paris during the 60s.

Viridiana goes back to the estate. When her Mother Superior visits her, V tells her she can’t go back to the convent now … she has changed too much. Instead she plans on pursuing private charity work.

To this end, V gathers a dozen or so cripples and beggars from the town, and gives them a home in the outbuildings of the estate. She gives them new clothes and work to keep them exercised and active. The beggars take this charity, but they are neither entirely evil, nor do their hearts shine with gold, they are crude and cynical, and you can see where it will end, because V is too naive and innocent to deal with the likes of them.

Meanwhile, a new character enters the tale: Jorge, the Uncle’s bastard son shows up with his girlfriend. The uncle left at least part of the estate to Jorge, and he is set to modernize it, tear the weeds from the fields and sow new crops, prune the orchards, bring electricity to the mansion. He’s a tough, aggressive, macho man, and he is rather interested in the beautiful blonde Viridiana – more than she would like.

Soon enough Jorge’s girlfriend, bored and jealous, leaves, and Jorge is fucking the housekeeper (we are left wondering whether the housekeeper performed similar services for the Uncle, and whether her little girl might be another of the Uncle’s bastards). He’s still after V though.

Everything comes to a climax one day when Jorge, V, and the housekeeper and her daughter go into town for a couple of days. The housekeeper’s daughter has a toothache and must see a dentist; Jorge and V have an appointment with the lawyer, probably to see to the closing of the Uncle’s will.

The beggars see their chance. They break into the big house and stage a riotous, drunken party. They smash furniture, plates, glasses. They spill wine over the expensive table linens. They fuck on the floor and pose in a blasphemous tableau mocking the Last Supper.

Jorge and V come home that night and surprise them. The beggars for the most part leave quietly, but two of them attack Jorge and tie him up, then proceed to rape Viridiana. Jorge manages to bribe one into murdering the other, then he frees himself and chases the last one off.

In the final scenes, a day or so later, V contemplates cutting off her beautiful blonde hair in grief and penitence, but decides not to. Instead she goes to her cousin. He sits her down with the housekeeper, and proceeds to teach them how to play cards. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘all cats are gray in the dark.’

The end.

The movie was banned in Spain, which might have contributed to sending Bunuel to France for the rest of his career. Certainly the church would have objected to the Last Supper scene, and the general sarcastic view of the young convent trained girl’s innocence. But a bigger factor might have been Franco.

The movie could be taken as an allegory of Spain’s history. The Church is seduced and almost won over by the landed aristocracy from whom she has sprung; then the Communists briefly take over, and turn everything upside-down; then the dictator comes in and incites murder between comrades (civil war) then proceeds to screw over both the working class and the church.

Bunuel’s time in Mexico showed how he could deliver popular entertainment that still served his purposes. The gothic melodrama and family soap opera only needs to be exaggerated a little to approach absurdity, and its strong reliance on symbols helps the dreamlike, surrealist images. Bunuel here uses some striking images to suggest this: the uncle fishes a bee out of a water cask, Viridiana sleepwalks and dumps ashes on her uncle’s bed; the uncle fetishistically wears articles of his dead bride’s gown; the crown of thorns in Viridiana’s possessions is tossed by the housekeeper’s daughter into a fire, then hooked out and dropped on the earth where it burns on; the jump rope the Uncle gives the little girl he uses to hang himself, then is taken as a belt by the beggar who rapes V. Little touches like this prove unforgettable, adding dimensions to the movie.

(Sunday 15 March 2009)