Mexican actress Silvia Pinal, muse of Spanish director Luis Bunuel Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1961 for “Viridiana”, died Thursday at the age of 93, said the government and the television group TelevisaUnivision.
“His legacy as an artist and his contribution to our culture are unforgettable,” said Culture Minister Claudia Curiel de Icaza on X.
Silvia Pinal is “one of the most emblematic figures in the history” of the golden age of Mexican cinema between 1940 and 1960, underlined the TelevisaUnivision group in a press release.
Silvia Pinal plays the role of a nun who leaves the convent in “Viridiana” by Bunuel, a Franco-Spanish co-production awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961.
The Mexican will appear in two other films in the trilogy of the Spaniard who took refuge in Mexico to escape Francoism (“The Exterminating Angel” in 1962 and “Simon of the Desert” in 1965).
In total, the actress has played in 84 films and 42 plays, recalls TelevisaUnivision, which also highlights her participation in television series for a total of 5,000 hours of content on behalf of the channel.
Pinal distinguished herself during the golden age of Mexican cinema, when the Churrubusco studios in Mexico City were the counterpart of Hollywood in Latin America.
She starred in popular comedies like “El rey del Barrio” (“The King of the Neighborhood”, 1950) with German Valdés “Tin Tan”, or “El inocente” (“The Innocent”, 1956) with another legend of Mexican cinema, Pedro Infante.
Ms. Pinal made a foray into politics as a deputy and senator for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which reigned supreme for 70 years from 1930 to 2000.
If “Viridiana” devoted her international reputation to cinema, the first name was synonymous with tragedy in her personal life: her daughter Viridiana was killed at age 19 in a road accident in 1982. Her granddaughter Viridiana is also died at the age of two in 1987 by drowning in a swimming pool.
