The most unusual thing about this film, however, is how few critics, at its release or now, actually understand how plainly dreadful it is, as they are so caught up in the criticism of intent. The usually stolid New York Times film critic, Bosley Crowther, however, was one of the few who did, writing:

The theme is that well-intended charity can often be badly misplaced by innocent, pious people. Therefore, beware of charity. That is the obvious moral that forms in this grim and tumorous tale of a beautiful young religious novice who gets into an unholy mess when she gives up her holy calling to try to atone for a wrong she has done ... It is an ugly, depressing view of life. And, to be frank about it, it is a little old-fashioned, too. His format is strangely literary; his symbols are obvious and blunt, such as the revulsion of the girl toward milking or the display of a penknife built into a crucifix. And there is something just a bit corny about having his bums doing their bacchanalian dance to the thunder of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’

What was old fashioned in the early 1960s is absolutely petrified now. Unfortunately, Buñuel lacked all subtlety in his films, and had little of depth to say; and not nearly enough ability to say it well (as evidenced in the interview segments with him in Cinéastes De Notre Temps), even if he knew what he wanted to say, which amounts to a little boy sticking his tongue out at authority. His screenplay is so poorly wrought that it never once provokes one to look at it a second time.

Perhaps the only moment of any real inspiration comes in a scene where the egotistical Jorge buys a tired dog, attached by a rope to the underside of a cart as it runs along the road (earlier, his father had shown animal empathy and rescued a drowning bee). He does this so the poor animal won’t have to suffer possible strangulation if it tires and gets pulled along. Yet, when he walks away with the dog, satisfied over his good deed, another cart goes by with another little dog attached to it in the same way. It’s a highly cinematic and poetic evocation of the character’s smugness and self-satisfaction in the face of life’s ceaseless cruelty. But it’s an artistic atoll in a sea of banality, both narratively and visually.

That this film shared the 1961 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival says that even Europeans sometimes picked crap to win awards; it’s not just a Hollywood phenomenon. At least in retrospect, one might feel that they were not praising the art, but its political intent at bashing the Vatican and Franco, yet did they have to actually give it top honors?