Buñuel is Back: Viridiana, music and religion in Spain in 1960 1

• Autores: Laura Miranda González
• Localización: The Routledge Handbook to Spanish Film Music / Laura Miranda González (ed. lit.), 2024, ISBN 9781003174974, págs. 192-205
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The Spanish Ministry of Information and Tourism's new film policy in 1962 was one of openness, an outward-looking strategy in terms of Spanish cultural values. With the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the country hoped to play a part in this new Europe. But the Francoist regime would not contemplate opening up in terms of democracy, so it focused on the world of culture, in which cinema played a prominent role.As a forerunner to such openness, in 1960 the Spanish government invited Luis Buñuel to shoot in Spain. This was an attempt to reclaim him as a Spaniard, Buñuel having spent almost his whole film career in exile in Mexico and France. Buñuel accepted the proposal under the auspices of a co-production agreement with Mexico and made Viridiana (1961). The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but was then banned in Spain.This chapter looks at the central importance of music in this Buñuel co-production, considering Buñuel's vast musical knowledge and the scarce attention critics have given the music in his films. The music in Viridiana adds content to the plot, strengthening an atavistic-atheist-surrealist offering in which musical references to the figure of Christ undergo a process of replacement through the story's female protagonist, a revived Viridiana who brings political, social and sexual openness to the Spain of 1960.