Word: viridiana
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...Viridiana. In 1960, Luis Bunuel returned to his native Spain after a 25-year exile to make this provocative film. It follows the odyssey of a crusading young nun who upon leaving her convent for the home of a perverse uncle, naively tries to turn the estate into a home for reforming a band of low-lifers and beggars. But the patronized riff-raff don't buy it, and when she absents herself they make their new home the scene of a wild feast and orgy. In the end, the idealistic man compromises with the forces of the evil reality...
...shoestring budget after more than ten years of enforced retirement from making movies. Dealing with street gangs in Mexico City, Bunuel displays here the same sardonic sensibility (combining psychoanalytic and sociological perspectives) which distinguishes the best of his later films, especially Belle de Jour and Viridiana. This film, though technically more primitive, has the most raw emotional power, and contains perhaps the most effective dream sequence in any film I've seen...
...which end up with them walking down a long country road to nowhere. The guiding theme seems to be none too funny comedy masquerading under the claim "isn't this surrealistic." Bunuel's new surrealism has none of the acid critical touch that characterized his earlier films like Viridiana or Belle de Jour. The same obsessive themes appear--bizarre sexual fetishes, anti-clericalism, absurdly stiff social rituals--without being integrated into any larger perspective. Phantom of Liberty is even worse. When we are shown aunt-nephew incest side by side with sadomasochistic monks and nuns in a French country...
Luis Bunuel's Viridiana at 6:15 and 9:30; his Nazarin...
...Bunuel announced that he was returning to Spain to make Virdiana, the Fascist government claimed a major propaganda triumph and leftists every where deplored Bunuel's sell-out. But Bunuel had the last laugh: although the government censors didn't realize it when they saw the film, Viridiana is a sardonic and ruthless attack on the role of the church, sexual morality, property, and social class in Spanish society, as became apparent to the world when it was shown at the Cannes film festival. Beggars take over a rich man's house and stage a ghastly version of the Last...