Religion and Power: The Appropriation of Da Vinci's The Last Supper in Viridiana and L'Ultima Cena

Abstract

RELIGION AND POWER: THE APPROPRIATION OF DA VINCI’S THE LAST SUPPER IN VIRIDIANA AND L’ULTIMA CENA CATHERINE SUNDT THE Biblical episode of the Last Supper, as told in all four of the gospels, is one of the most well-known and referenced events in all of Christianity. The event takes place on Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus was crucified, and thus tells the story of his final night as a man of flesh and blood. At this dinner, several important events happen: Jesus blesses the wine and the cup in the ceremony of the Eucharist, he claims that one of his 12 apostles will betray him, and he gives a final sermon or “farewell discourse.” Many artists have created their own visual representations of the dinner, but the most famous portrayal is Leonardo da Vinci ’s 15ft × 29ft mural L’Ultima Cena (referred to henceforth as The Last Supper), one of the most recognizable pieces of art in history. During the twentieth century, film became a popular medium for both artistic expression and social criticism. In the 60s and 70s, two films featured extended scenes that appropriated the well-known religious image of da Vinci’s mural in order to make a statement about religion , and did so in a way that would resonate with the traditionally Catholic countries of Cuba and Spain. Although the Catholic doctrine speaks of charity and mercy, the disadvantaged characters in the film receive only temporary kindness and then are quickly forgotten. By using traditional religious symbols to show that not all of God’s children receive the same treatment, the directors are able to undermine Catholicism and show its sometimes nefarious byproducts, such as fascism and marginalization. In 1961, Luis Buñuel’s film Viridiana told the story of a young woman who, about to take her vows as a nun, turns her late uncle’s 71 house into an “albergue,” or rooming house for the poor and homeless. The Last Supper scene features the vagrants that she is sheltering and shows the house descending into debauchery and destruction, instead of the peaceful, holy atmosphere that Viridiana was trying to maintain. Viridiana was considered blasphemous for its time for condemning the counterproductive nature of Christian charity, which, in Buñuel’s own words, “produce catástrofes, el estropicio de la casa por los mendigos, riñas entre estos, la posible violación de Viridiana” (quoted in Pérez 119). Buñuel further angered the church by framing the riotous events of the film within a religious context by using Handel’s Messiah and reenacting the poses of The Last Supper with homeless people, an act that has been classified as a “perverse appropriation” and “parodic rewriting ” (Gutiérrez-Albilla 1) of an important and recognizable Christian image. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea studied at the Centro Sperimentale film school in Rome in the 1950s, when it was “awash in the Neorealist influences of Roberto Rossellini and Luis Buñuel” (Britannica). So, it is fitting that his 1976 film La última cena would appropriate the same religious image as Viridiana. The film showed a pious sugar plantation owner in Cuba who holds a large banquet and attempts to teach his slaves about religion and the necessity of suffering for eternal happiness. While the slaves believe that they are being shown kindness, they are merely being placated, and the landowner does not give them the following day off of work as he promised to do, leading to a slave revolt. This film also makes anti-religious commentary through the actions of the count and the hypocritical ideologies that he preaches. In this paper, I will compare and contrast the two films’ messages about religion and how it was instrumental in dominating and exploiting the members of the lowest classes in both 20th-century Spain and late 18th-century Cuba. Several authors, such as Julián Daniel GutiérrezAlbilla and Anton Karl Kozlovic, have written about the religious symbolism in Viridiana or La última cena, and a few authors have even connected the films by speaking of Gutiérrez Alea’s admiration of Buñuel, the intertextuality of the two films, and their “common...