The Young and the Damned

Atheist, Marxist, Freudian, Surrealist, anarchist, fetishist, satirist, or Spaniard, Luis Buñuel was all these or more… One of the greatest of all filmmakers, Buñuel expressed an extraordinary personal vision of the world through an exceptional self-effacing special taste, creating a body of work unequaled in its abundance of meaning and its power by any other…

In 1946, Buñuel moved to Mexico where, between more conventional assignments, he summed up his creativity with a vengeance… His first masterpiece of this prolific period, "The Young and the Damned" was a masterpiece of social surrealism and the founding work of third world barrio repulsion…

Portraying the distress of delinquents in MexicoCity's streets, he admitted the effects of shockingly cruel environment but declined to glamorize his victim-heroes: the gang torments a blind beggar who is himself a skillful paedophile, while a Freudian dream the most 'innocent' boy fights a friend for his mother' s sexual favors…

The film is powerful enough to make a one firm man weep or encourage a true-believer to lose hope… Once seen, its disturbing images can never be forgotten

This ¨ The Young and the damned¨ or ¨The forgotten ones¨deals with a group of juvenile outsiders delinquents who live violent and crime-full existences in the squalid slums of Mexico. There a reform-school escaped young , El Jaibo , goes back to his neighborhood and seeks vengeance against the informant who allegedly sent him in prison. Obsessed to find him, at last he meets him, and a terrible retribution takes place. The weak and unwitting little boy Pedro and the violent villain El Jaibo will intricately interweave their bitter fates . While the young boy Pedro, : Mejia, is gradually coerced and corrupted by the nasty leader delinquent bent on revenge : Roberto Cobo.

Wrenching, documentary- like account of waifs, beggars, street urchins, delinquents and poor youngsters in the streets from the Mexican metropolis. And sadly showing quite a few amoral roles , corruption , badness and despicable acts of pure evil carried out by some young people . Graphic and depressing, including violent and disagreeable scenes. It is not for all tastes, but nonetheless masterfully done. From surrealist Luis Buñuel shot in 21days and edited in 4 days, being stunningly photographed in black and while by excellent cameraman Gabriel Figueroa .

The picture was well directed by Luis Buñuel during his Mexico period. He first Mexico made film was Gran Casino with Jorge Negrete and following The great Madcap or El Gran Calavera with Fernando Soler. Then, he was hired by producer Oscar Dancigers to make this film The Forgotten Ones based on facts, and being shot in Tepeyac studios. He followed directing in Mexico with the same producer a lot of titles, such as : The devil and the flesh, Mexican bus ride, The Brute, El, Robinson Crusoe , A woman without love, Wuthering heights , The criminal life of Archibald Cruz , Evil eden, Nazarin , The Young one , The Angel Exterminator , Simon of the desert . And his French period including : Diary of a chambermaid , Belle de Jour, The milky way , Discreet charm of Bourgeoise, The phantom of Liberty. The exiled Spanish director also shot in Spain some films , such as : Las Hurdes tierra sin Pan, Tristana, Viridiana and his last film : Obscure object desire. Rating : Above average . Essential and indispensable watching for Luis Buñuel buffs

I just saw this at the local art house theatre and I realized that I've never seen a decent print of this masterpiece which ranks alongside Citizen Kane and the Bicycle Thieves as the greatest film ever made. What a shame? I'm waiting for Criterion or somebody to restore it and give it the respect it so rightfully deserves.

However, watching butchered, scratched prints with a muddy soundtrack has given the film a charm and personality. It's as dirty and grungy as the story it is telling.

This film is perfect. It's the closest thing to artistic TRUTH that I've seen. And yes the characters are rotten but they break your heart. Just when you think Jaibo is one of the screens greatest villains, he tells a story about being abandened as a child, and seeing the beautiful face of a woman who looked like a saint who may or may not have been his mother. Powerful stuff. Never have I seen a more relentless and brutal film. It never shys away from the truth and try to sugar coat it. All the kids are complex. They're neither innocents or devils. The story of troubled youth and urban violence have been told countless of times, but this is the real deal and the measuring stick for all.

Buñuel's most serious, concerned and poignant film. If 'les Quatre cent coups' (1959, Truffaut) is good, this is brilliant. Only the cinematography, which is still very good, can not equal the level of that film. Everything in this meticulous film has a purpose: nothing is left to coincidence and 10 seconds missed is fatal (the brilliance we're only used from Kurosawa and Eisenstein). Buñuel uses his intuitive graphics and metaphoric sequences, rather than fancy lighting and cocky cinematography, to emphasize his concern with the boys (the protagonists: the 'forgotten ones') and his aversion to the apathy of the fathers (who haven't much screen time) who mind-numbed think about sanctions rather than the causes of the delinquency.

'Los Olvidados' deals with the distance between two generations, especially the distance between fathers and sons. Where that distance in 'a Clockwork Orange' and 'Fight Club' leads to virtually unbridled violence, and in 'les Quatre cent coups' (1959, Truffaut) to other misdemeanors, not to mention the innocent mischief in 'les Mistons' (1957, Truffaut, short), here it leads to callousness and abuse of whatever is in the way. But in the way of what? Do the lives of 'the forgotten ones' have a direction at all, apart from trite survival?

Although M (1931, Fritz Lang) already focuses on the psychological problems that delinquents can have (first serial killer on celluloid ever), the other movies mentioned above are all younger, so I tend to believe that Los Olvidados was a groundbreaking film and inspired the other filmmakers. Correct me if I'm wrong. Los Olvidados deals with the distance from the apathetic parents, in Clockwork the parents are petit-bourgeois populace, in Fight Club seem to exist no parents at all (generation x) and in Quatre cent coups the parents have their own problems and not enough persuasiveness to create a solid ground. Finally Los Olvidados reminded me of 'Rocco e i suoi fratelli' (1962, Visconti), where a family moves to the city too and a disciplinary father figure lacks.

This is another Buñuel film that seems to have no precise beginning and no end. It's just there with all its brilliance to raise a matter, and should not be missed, for it demands a distinguished place in film history somewhere between M and A Clockwork Orange.

Why o why can't we vote 11 :(

After his exile from his native Spain, director Luis Bunuel moved to Mexico in 1946, gaining citizenship in 1949. It was here where he would make his more generic films (by his standards), as he honed his own directorial skill while never straying too far from his surrealistic background. After the success of his comedy The Great Madcap (1949), he was commissioned by producer Oscar Dancigers to make a serious film about child poverty in Mexico City, and out of it came Los Olvidados, or The Young and the Innocent, to give it it's American title. Bunuel apparently spent months disguised as a homeless amongst the poverty- stricken children of the slums in order to research, and if that tale is true, it certainly came off, as Los Olvidados is one of the best and most realistic depictions of the innocent turning to crime in a fit of desperation.

The film follows three children in the same slum. Pedro (Alfonso Mejia) is a young tearaway who wants to change his ways and work, in order to help out his mother who neglects him due to her constant work. 'Little Eyes' (Mario Ramirez) has been abandoned by his father, and is adopted by the blind beggar Don Carmelo (Miguel Inclan), a bitter man who frequently voices his opinions on the young criminals of the city. El Jaibo (Robert Cobo) has just been released from prison and immediately sets about gaining revenge of the boy he thinks ratted him out. Jaibo and Pedro corner the boy, only for Jaibo to bludgeon him to death, and the two boys flee. Pedro struggles to keep himself out of trouble and leaves home after being accused of stealing a knife, only to find his and Jaibo's paths repeatedly crossing.

At its heart, this is pure neo-realism, sharing its tone most obviously with Vittorio de Sica's masterpiece The Bicycle Thieves (1948) in exposing poverty and class divide as the main cause of criminality, due to the ill education and the hopelessness of the young. Although, out of nowhere, comes a surrealistic dream sequence so beautiful, and so haunting, that you know you're watching Bunuel, and his artistic creativity seems to bulge from the screen. Best known for his mocking of the upper-classes (the bourgeois were clearly as fascinating to Bunuel as they were repugnant), here he stays in the slums, promoting as much sympathy for its filthy lead characters as hatred.

Jaibo is a true monster, raised without parents, he bullies his way through life, grasping any opportunity that presents itself (he even manages to seduce Pedro's lonely and overworked mother, and rob a legless man). It is Pedro who is the beating heart of the film, especially when he leaves home and we witness the state of the lower- classes from his eyes and how they are viewed (in one powerful sequence, an upper class man obviously propositions him for sex, but we only see their exchange, as we watch them through a window). Bunuel then manages to deliver not one, but two sensational endings, that manage to move and shock as much as the famous and upsetting climax to Bicycle Thieves. Bunuel would go to France to create his greatest works, but Los Olvidados displays many of the attributes that made Bunuel one of the most important directors in the history of film, as well as being a great film in its own right.

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