Before the news of the death of Silvia Pinal at 93 years old, The obituaries and celebrations of the legacy of this legendary figure of Mexican cinema have repeated the formula of referring to her as “Muse of Luis Buñuel.” A reductionist commonplace that should be qualified (not to say eradicate), given not only Pinal’s important filmography apart from the Aragonese filmmaker, but also due to the magnitude of his collaborations.
Silvia Pinal and Luis Buñuel worked together in three films that marked a turning point in the director’s career: Viridiana (1961), The exterminating angel (1962) and Simon of the desert (1965). Three almost consecutive masterpieces (except for the parenthesis of Diary of a waitress, 1964) that defined the passage from Buñuel’s Mexican stage to his absolute consecration as one of the prominent figures of world cinema.
The turning point was marked Viridiana, clear. The scandalous film that brought Buñuel out of exile and took him back to Franco’s Spain to film the film with which would win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival to the chagrin of the authorities who banned it and sought its destruction. All of this, from the genesis to the material salvation of the film, It was thanks to Silvia Pinal.
Silvia Pinal and Luis Buñuel
Viridiana It was not the first attempt at collaboration between Buñuel and Pinal. The actress, who during the fifties had become one of the most recognized stars of Mexican cinema and had two Ariel awards, at the beginning of the decade had been close to starring alongside Ernesto Alonso an adaptation of Tristana, the novel of Benito Pérez Galdós, that the director of The Andalusian dog I longed to perform.
However, the poor commercial record of his Mexican films of that time made the producers very suspicious and the project will be cancelled; Buñuel tried again to carry out the adaptation in the sixties with Rocío Dúrcal and ended up filming it in 1970 with Catherine Deneuve as protagonist. Years before that, Pinal resumed contact with Buñuel willing to bring another Galdós to the movies.
The Mexican actress, leaning on her producer husband Gustavo Alatriste, promoted the Galdosiana project Halma that would end up becoming Viridiana. Pinal was determined that Buñuel would direct the film and, as he recalled in his biography This is me, edited in 2015: “I chose Buñuel, not he me.”
“When I saw his work I loved it, I fell in love with his cinema, his black humor, his way of being and I knew that I would not rest until I was directed by him and I achieved it,” the actress recalled. Thus, with Alatriste as Mexican producer and Pere Portabella and Ricardo Muñoz Suay In the Spanish production, the project convinced Buñuel to return to Spain to film what would be one of his most awarded and pursued films.
When Viridiana won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (ex aequo with the French A long absence by Henri Colpi) a fiery article from the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano It set off alarm bells. The Franco dictatorship decided to make the film disappear, which had been branded anti-Christian, sacrilegious and blasphemous, prohibiting all mention of its existence in Spain and dismissing the general director of Cinematography and Theatre, José Muñoz Fontán, for accepting the award.
It was Silvia Pinal again who saved Viridiana. According to what she herself said on several occasions, He hid the rolls of film from one of the copies in his coat. to be able to take her out of the country and flee to Mexico with her. In Spain it could not be seen until after Franco’s death: it hit theaters in April 1977.
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