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CENSORSHIP IS THERE IN THE XXI CENTURY? WHY?

64 º Festival de Cannes
So laughed Buñuel of Franco
is celebrating its 50 years of the Palme d'Or for the film "Viridiana" - is the only highest award achieved so far by the English cinema in Cannes
Rocio Garcia

The negative had been moved secretly to Paris. With the excuse that in the French capital were best studies for the sono-authorization and the final mixes, some partly true, the tape reached without going through the last censorship of the Franco dictatorship, the Cannes Film Festival the night before projection. "We feared the worst if before its premiere at Cannes was envisioned by the director general of Cinematography" recalls Pere Portabella, the producer of Viridiana, one of the major works of Luis Buñuel.
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The negative came to the festival via Paris and the censors could not view it
Fontan Muñoz, CEO of Film, was fired after returning from Cannes
The film, starring Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey and Francisco Rabal, was shown on the last day of the event. The impact caused was enormous. Therefore, the general director of Cinematography, José María Muñoz Fontan, abruptly disappeared from the stage. The next day, on May 18, 1961, the Cannes jury, which had virtually decided on the titles, decided to award the Palme d'Or Viridiana ex aequo and a long absence, Henri Colpi. On this day ... Exactly half a century ago. Viridiana, the film whose script passed the strict censorship by Franco and galdosiana a classic story, without references to the elements and religious fetish crucifix as the famous knife was "a Venezuelan soap opera" in the words of Portabella, a brutal film and anticlerical.
"What we do with the prize? Who collects?" Were the questions raised by the film crew following the decision of the jury at Cannes. "Buñuel was half sick in Paris and told us that he would not travel to Cannes. So his friend Domingo Dominguin and Juan Antonio Bardem, both known communists working in the production Uninci, had the bright idea of \u200b\u200boffering the general director of Cinema , Muñoz Fontan, who took the stage to pick up the Palme d'Or as the representative of Spain " Portabella said. It was a way that everyone is saved. Muñoz
Fontan, who had taken refuge in his hotel just outside of the projection, accepted the "poisoned chalice." And so poisoned. Just when we landed in Madrid, a day after the ceremony, the then Minister of Information and Tourism, Gabriel Arias Salgado, quoted him in his office. Fulminant had been dismissed.
The controversy was served. And the goal of Buñuel took Franco's certificate of naturalization. L'Osservatore Romano, official Vatican newspaper, described as "blasphemous" film and called the excommunication of the entire team. It even said that the music of Handel and Mozart included in the film was "perverse." Franco's authorities, rather than banning Viridiana, denied its existence as a English film. "They made it disappear, as if he had never shot," says Pere Portabella. After a time, the Mexican co-producer Gustavo Alatriste, the husband of Silvia Pinal, picked up the negative refugee in Paris and took him to Mexico, where he is attributing to the Mexican nationality. Only thus could build. Viridiana
had assumed the Buñuel returned to Spain after his years of exile in Mexico. The Franco dictatorship saw the opportunity of exploiting a supposed launch of the scheme granting permission to film the filmmaker Aragon. The Cannes was a great political success. Viridiana was the end of the race as a producer of Portabella-after The gulfs of Carlos Saura, and the stroller, Marco Ferreri, "but also a great moral and political satisfaction. It still invading French teacher Roumette Monique, who worked as an intern, with 21 years in the making of Viridiana and the star of this short documentary Return to Viridiana, written by Juan Zavala and address of Pedro González Bermúdez. Back to Viridiana, which was presented yesterday in Madrid, opens today at the Sala Berlanga, before the screening of Buñuel film remastered copy. Monique
Roumette, a privileged witness of the filmmaker's encounter with Spain which made a diary kept, smile with admiration when he recalls the genius of Buñuel: "The film seemed like a holy thing, but when you saw the humor that Buñuel had you realized that he was preparing a time bomb. "
"Buñuel is an exceptional case," said Portabella, "if only I had made the golden age and Un Chien Andalou, jewels of surrealism, had also gone down in history. But he goes further: his work has also been recognized as one of the classics of world cinema. still love him very much. "