Viridiana is a work of genius, and as such has accomplished much more than it set out to. In it Buñuel offers his audience a splendid opportunity for exploring his creative universe and finding enrichment in a fresh point of view, a new outlook on reality….

Buñuel is not a believer to be overlooked. He obviously believes in the miraculous or, rather, in the liberating force of the irrational and in the poetry of instinct. Religion, however, as commonly understood, is paradoxically, merely an attempt to rationalize the miraculous…. This is the function of dogma. And of one thing I am certain—Buñuel is utterly free of dogmatism. He likewise instinctively opposes a secular form of rationalism which endows man with the ability to attain absolute knowledge….

On the other hand, Buñuel is not an agnostic. Like any true artist, he explores the furthest...