One of Andrei Tarkovsky's favorite films
Selected by the Vatican in the "religion" category of its list of 45 "great films."
In his autobiography, 'My Last Sigh', Luis Buñuel said the dying woman in the plague scene was inspired by _Dialog Between a Priest and a Dying Man_ by Marquis de Sade.
Film historian Jose Xavier Nava said; In Nazarin you can see some of the most well-known and disturbing images of Bunuel's cinema, such as the laughing Christ, a crying child dragging a blanket down an empty street, a kiss that turns into a bite and a woman giving a pineapple to the protagonist. These are still the subject of Byzantine discussions, of which at the time, the filmmaker refused to participate in. "They (the discussions) intrigue me as much as you do," he said, adding, "There are no theories or metaphysics in my movie."
Paco Rabal, who plays the priest Nazarin, on more than one occasion declared himself an atheist. That atheism was accentuated after working with Bunuel. In, The 100 Best Films of the Mexican Cinema, Nazarin occupies the 6th position.
Nazarin signaled the first and only collaboration of Bunuel with the independent producer, Manuel Barbachano Ponce, who always stayed out of the official industry, which was prey to bureaucracy and trade union closures, and achieved important contributions for the Mexican Cinema of the time.
Luis Bunuel said this was his favorite of the films he made in Mexico (from the early 1950s to the early 1960s).