Los Olvidados (pronounced: [los olβiˈðaðos], Spanish for "The Forgotten Ones"), known in the U.S. as The Young and the Damned, is a 1950 Mexican film directed by Luis Buñuel.
Ã"scar Dancigers, the producer, asked Buñuel to direct this film after the success of the 1949 film El Gran Calavera. Buñuel already had a script ready titled ¡Mi huerfanito jefe! about a boy who sells lottery tickets. However, Dancigers had in mind a more realistic and serious depiction of children in poverty in Mexico City.
After conducting some research, Jesús Camacho and Buñuel came up with a script that Dancigers was pleased with. The film can be seen in the tradition of social realism, although it also contains elements of surrealism present in much of Buñuel's work.
It earned the Best Director award at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.
Cast
- Stella Inda as Pedro's Mother
- Miguel Inclán as Don Carmelo, the blind man
- Alfonso MejÃa as Pedro
- Roberto Cobo as "El Jaibo"
- Alma Delia Fuentes as Meche
- Francisco Jambrina as the principal of the rural school
- Jesús Navarro as Julián's father
- EfraÃn Arauz as "Cacarizo"
- Jorge Pérez as "Pelón"
- Javier Amézcua as Julián
- Mário RamÃrez as "Ojitos" ("Little Eyes"), the lost boy
- Ernesto Alonso as Narrator (uncredited)
Plot
The film is about a group of destitute children and their misfortunes in a Mexico City slum. El Jaibo escapes juvenile jail and reunites with the street gang that he leads. El Jaibo's gang attempts to rob a blind street musician. They fail at first, but later track him down, beat him, and destroy his instruments.
With the help of Pedro, El Jaibo tracks down Julián, the youngster who supposedly sent him to jail. El Jaibo puts his arm in a fake sling and hides a rock in it. El Jaibo confronts Julián, who denies that he reported him to the police. Julián refuses to fight El Jaibo because it wouldn't be a fair fight with El Jaibo's arm broken. As Julián starts to walk away, El Jaibo hits him in the head with the rock. He then beats Julián to death and takes his money. El Jaibo warns Pedro not to report the crime, and since he shares Julián's money with Pedro, Pedro is an accomplice to the murder.
Pedro's mother resents her son's behavior, and shows signs that she doesn't even love him or care for him as a son. Pedro is extremely saddened by this and vows to start behaving better. He finds work as apprentice to a blacksmith. One day, El Jaibo comes to talk with him about their secret and, unbeknownst to Pedro, steals an expensive knife from the blacksmith's table. Pedro is accused of the crime and sent to a juvenile rehabilitation program, the "farm school," where he misbehaves and kills two chickens. The principal then makes an offer to Pedro, telling him he can leave anytime and hands him a 50 pesos bill. Pedro accepts the offer, but as soon as he leaves, he encounters El Jaibo, who steals it. Pedro then tracks down El Jaibo and fights him. The fight ends in a stalemate, but Pedro announces to the crowd that it was El Jaibo who killed Julián. El Jaibo flees, but the blind man has heard the accusation and tells the police.
Pedro tracks El Jaibo down once again, and El Jaibo kills Pedro. While fleeing, El Jaibo runs into the police. As El Jaibo tries to run away, the police shoot and kill him. Meche and her grandfather find Pedro's body. Not wanting to attract the police, they dump his body down a garbage-covered cliff. On their way, they pass Pedro's mother, who, though once unconcerned with her disobedient child, is now searching for him.
Alternate Ending
In the year 2002, it was announced that an alternate ending for Los Olvidados (labeled "the happy ending") was discovered at the Film Warehouse of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and it would be restored digitally in order to show it to the public. On July 8, 2005, it was re-screened with the alternate ending on a few selected venues and included in subsequent DVD releases .
At the International Cinematographic Festival in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, on February 3, 2011, the last surviving member of the cast, Alfonso Mejia (Pedro), introduced the alternative ending to the film.
According to Mejia, Buñuel was "pressured by the censorship in México, and urged to film an alternative ending, a conventional ending, to maintain the image of a progressive Mexico, where no one was poor or illiterate" (you can view the interview here on YouTube).
The alternative ending begins with El Jaibo and Pedro fighting on an abandoned warehouse. Pedro pushes El Jaibo from the roof, where he falls to his death. Pedro frisks the body for the money El Jaibo stole from him (in contrast to the original ending, where Pedro is murdered by El Jaibo). Pedro returns to the farm school with the money that the principal entrusted to him.
Analysis
Thematically, Los Olvidados is similar to Buñuel's earlier Spanish film, Las Hurdes. Both films deal with the never-ending cycle of poverty and despair. Los Olvidados, is especially interesting because although “Buñuel employed … elements of Italian neorealism,†a concurrent movement across the Atlantic Ocean marked by “outdoor locations, nonprofessional actors, low budget productions, and a focus on the working classes,†Los Olvidados is not a neorealist film (Fernandez, 42). “Neorealist reality is incomplete, conventional, and above all rational,†Buñuel wrote in a 1953 essay titled "Poetry and Cinema." “The poetry, the mystery, all that completes and enlarges tangible reality is utterly lacking.†(Sklar, 324) Los Olvidados contains such surrealistic shots as when “a boy throws an egg at the camera lens, where it shatters and drips†or a scene in which a boy has a dream in slow-motion (Sklar, 324). The surrealist dream sequence was actually shot in reverse and switched in post-production.
Reception
Los Olvidados is widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. It currently holds a 94% score on the website Rotten Tomatoes based on 29 reviews. It was inscribed on UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Register in 2003 in recognition of its historical significance.
References
- Fernandez, Walter, Jr. “A Directory of Dynamic Directors: Luis Buñuel.†Cinema Editor Fourth Quarter 2005: 42-43.
- Sklar, Robert. Film: An International History of the Medium. [London]: Thames and Hudson, [c. 1990].
External links
- Los olvidados at the cinema of Mexico site of the ITESM (Spanish)
- Los Olvidados at the Internet Movie Database
- Los olvidados at IberoAmericanMovies.com