by Douglas Messerli
Luis
Alcoriz and Luis Buñuel (writers, with dialogue by Max Aub, Juan Larrea and
Pedro de Urdimalas), Luis Buñuel (director) Los olvidados (The Forgotten
Ones / The Young and the Damned)
/ 1950, USA 1952
Luis
Buñuel’s powerful 1950 Mexican film, Los
olviadados, is a study of betrayals—betrayals by family members, street
friends, neighbors and, most importantly, of society itself. The young boys at
the center of Buñuel’s work have hardly any chance to survive, being prisoners
of their economic and sociological conditions. The marvel of this film,
however, is not simply its political and sociological statements, but the way
in which it helps us to comprehend each of these often unsympathetic characters’
behavior. Each act seemingly out of selfish necessity, but we come to recognize
those behavioral needs, and comprehend how their obsessions arise from their
simple attempts to survive in a society that seemingly does not want them to.
For
me, the central figure is a basically “good” boy, Pedro (Alfonso Mejía), who is
not only hanging out, as his mother vehemently states, with the wrong crowd,
but has no other figures in his life, including his child-like mother, who
might give him a sense of worth. Pedro’s mother (Stella Inda), a hard-working
maid, earning little money to support her four children, is herself furious
with the world which has cast her out at the early age of 14, when she became
pregnant with Pedro. She is ill and has few alternatives. But in that fury she
has also neglected the son who she is determined is incorrigible. In fact,
Pedro is a loving boy, who, in turn, loves all animals (although he destroys
several in retribution for his own treatment throughout the film). He literally
has nowhere else to go but to fend for himself on the streets, at least finding
a certain degree of respect with his street companions, particularly with the
true villain of the tale, Jaibo (Roberto Cobo), who at the beginning of the
story has just escaped from a reform institution.Even the violent ruffian and thief Jaibo, however, in Buñuel’s telling, must be contextualized within the facts that he has never known his mother or father, issues which he uses to gain sympathy from Pedro’s mother as he attempts a sexual relationship with her. Nonetheless, we can feel little sympathy for him, despite his somewhat charismatic demeanor and appearance, when, immediately after his escape, he galvanizes his former street friends (children who seem far younger than he) to rob and later beat an elderly blind street musician and soon after, to kill a former colleague whom he believes has betrayed him, Julian (Javier Amézcua)—a man/boy who has left the streets to work in support of his drunken father and suffering mother—by hitting him in the head with a stone and beating him with a club. The murder sweeps up the young Pedro into a world from which he can never escape, as Pedro perceives subconsciously from the beginning, presented in a surrealist-like dream he has the next night, where the dead Julien appears beneath his bed while his normally hostile mother arises to embrace him. The fact is his mother not only does embrace or even love him, but denies him the paltry food which she might offer. Pedro is cornered in a world where he is made guilty simply through his existence.
The complexities of this are the subject of the film, Pedro's true innocence being displayed by his adoption of another young boy, “Little Eyes (Mário Ramírez), whose father has abandoned him on the street. “Little Eyes,” in turn, is taken in and abused by the blind man (Miguel Inclán), while others of this street saga are interwoven into the tragic events, which include betrayals of love, sex, and even well-meaning social institutions, such as the rural school to where Pedro is finally sent.

Los Angeles, February 27, 2014
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