The peak years for Catherine Deneuve, the great French beauty and darling of the Great Directors of her youth, stretched from Demy’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “The Young Girls of Rochefort” to Polanski’s “Repulsion” through Buñuel’s “Bell de Jour,” Truffaut’s “Mississippi Mermaid,” with the Oscar nominated “Tristana” (1970), also directed by Luis Buñuel, heralding the end of an era, although she’d work for Demy on a couple of post-peak “auteur” films of the ’70s.

Those ’60s films made her an international screen icon and ensured the longevity and the”legend” label that she grew into in a career that later earned her an Oscar nomination (“Indochine”) and kept her in demand on into the 2000s with films as varied as the musical “8 Women,” the comedy “Potiche” all the way to year’s dramedy “Funny Birds.”

“Tristana” might be the weakest of those ’60s classics, a film that suffers due to the technical and budgetary shortcomings of much European cinema of the day, as well as its general old-fashioned feel.

It’s a Spanish melodrama and the French Deneuve is dubbed into Spanish, as is Italian co-star Franco Nero. Indeed, all the dialogue and sound effects are vaguely disembodied suggesting the entire soundtrack was looped, a not-uncommon European practice of the era.

And that calls attention to the general mustiness of the story being told here. Based on a 19th century novel, this 1920s period piece is about a beautiful young woman who becomes the ward of an older, old-fashioned guardian (Fernando Rey of “The French Connection”).

For all his grumping about “appearances” and “honor” and virtue, noble Don Lope lusts after Tristana, seduces her and continues to try and control her as she develops an independent streak and then falls for eveyr parent and ward’s nightmare — an artist (Nero).

Old attitudes, mores and conservatism run up against “the modern” as we see Don Lope dismiss being asked to judge a duel when he hears the combatants will only fight until “first blood” is drawn.

“There are no longer men of my kind,” he huffs (in Spanish with English subtitles), sneering at the “effeminacy” of the culture he finds himself living in.

Tristana is in mourning when we meet her. Her mother has passed and as someone who “never enjoyed your father’s wealth,” she is at the mercy of the town (Toledo) and its sexist rogues and chancers.

Don Lope will take her in, and his housekeeper and cook Saturna (Lola Gaos) will help her fit in.

“No one is better than Don Lope,” she assures Tristana. “But where there is a skirt, he has horns and a tail.”

Rey plays Don Lope as a literal mustache twirler when he spies a pretty woman. We are told that he called a married woman’s husband out for a duel, which adds a touch of dash to his persona. But he is a mouthy hypocrite — stingy, cash-poor, domineering and a creature of leisure and habits, contemptuous of capitalism, loans, work, even the Guardia Civil, the police.

When he orders Tristana to “stop mourning,” because of how comfortable her all-black wardrobe makes everyone else, she does. When he comes on to her with a kiss, she giggles. And when he visits her room later, she submits to him.

But as time passes and she grows into her own (Deneuve was 26 when the film was made), Tristana sours on “the old man,” his penny pinching and control issues. She is ready to meet someone to fall in love with, and the not-quite-starving artist Horacio (Nero) is that someone. She dreams of running away to Barcelona with him, contributing piano lessons income to their stake, and freeing herself from Don Lope.

The old contronts the new most graphically in a scene where Don Lope, disapproving of her love match, goes to confront Horacio, insults and threatens with a glove-slap, only to get punched out at this invitation to a 19th century duel. Get with the times, old man, is the message.

Sex is that which cannot be named in this multi-national production, as what Don Lope is most concerned about is Tristana parading in public, “layabouts” coming on to her and her falling for one. Saturna scolds her deaf and horny teen son Saturno (Jesús Fernández) about slacking off at his first job for masturbating. She never says the word, as he’s deaf. A gesture will do.

Deneuve was forced to add ineffectual mime to her repertoire for conversations with the deaf Saturno — who with a pal takes every chance he can get to grope the grieving girl in early scenes — and is saddled with a performance that’s as subtle as a mime, with everything that’s understated struggling to register on screen and especially on the soundtrack.

Long a Spanish exile who filmed in Europe and Mexico, with a career that traced itself back to the famed silent surrealism collaboration with Dali, “Un chien andalou” (An Andalusian Dog”), Buñuel was anxious to make his Spanish homecoming a triumph, in spite of the conservative, Catholic-endorsed restrictions of Franco-era Spain.

But those restrictions may have a lot to do with the early reviews and even Oscar consideration of this Buñuel classic. “Look at all he had to overcome,” after all.

Deneuve had covered similar cinematic ground, as had Buñuel with his sensational “Viridiana”). The filmmaker admitted the novel he was working with here old fashioned to the point of “kitschy” and figured he’d overcome that. He didn’t. Not entirely, anyway.

There’s merit in even the pedestrian depictions of pre-tourism Toledo, the fading glory of the broke Spanish aristocracy — Don Lope mutters about getting a fair price from “the Jew” he sells the family silverware to. And yet Rey, mustache-twirling aside, was one of the more commanding screen figures of his era for a reason. Great presence.

But “Tristana” has a creaking quality. It’s merely a semi-successful attempt to transplant an early Spain (the novel came out in 1892) to a later, Civil War Eve story about a world dying out and the ruthless, unsentimental one about to replace it.

Rating: PG-13, adult situations, innuendo, mild violence

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey and Franco Nero

Credits: Directed by Luis Buñuel, scripted by Julio Alejandro and Luis Buñuel, based on a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós. A Mercurio/Cohen Media Group release streaming on Tubi, etc.

Running time: 1:39