8: Viridiana (with Justine Smith)

Our subject today is nuns in the movies in general, and in particular the 1961 Luis Buñuel masterpiece Viridiana. Buñuel left Spain over the Franco dictatorship and forged a great filmmaking career in Mexico. Surprisingly. Buñuel accepted an invitation from Franco to return to Spain to make whatever film he wanted. He delivered Viridiana, one of the great “Fuck You” movies, a vicious satire of both Franco’s dictatorship and the Catholic Church. It was condemned by the Vatican and banned in Spain for 17 years. It also won the Palme d’or and vaulted Buñuel into the top rank of world cinema.

Justine Smith is a Montreal-based film writer and programmer with a longtime fascination with nuns in cinema: she and I also talk about our mutual dislike of The Sound Of Music, the problems with Quebec’s “secularist” policies, and life in Montreal during the pandemic. 

Follow Justine Smith on Twitter.

“When Hard Meets Soft: The Painful Pleasures of Nunsploitation Cinema” by Justine Smith (for Cléo)

American trailer for Viridiana

Um Mundo Catita:  “As minhas coisas favoritas”