Viridiana still speaks as loud and as clear and with the same voice as L'Age d'Or, still asserting sanity and cleanliness in a world whose nature is to be mad and filthy. If there has been a change in the thirty years between [the two films], it is that the Swiftian fury of L'Age d'Or has given place to a calmer philosophic clowning, as cool and therefore as deadly as Voltaire. (p. 116)

Viridiana's picture of mankind does not present a very flattering image of God. Buñuel depicts men's viciousness in terms that are no less direct and no more amiable that those of L'Age d'Or. If there is a hero at all it is Jorge, who lives positively and (as a good surrealist) according to the dictates of desire. Yet one feels that Buñuel does not prefer him to the others—even to Don Ezekiel, the...