Friday, June 15, 2018

Los Olvidados

Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) is a 1950 Mexican film directed by Luis Buñuel. It's the story of young people struggling in poverty in Mexico City. A sad story of how poor kids don't stand a chance.

via Youtube:



"They should kill them all before they are born."

The New York Times calls it "brutal and unrelenting". Slant Magazine gives it 4 out of 4 stars.

The New Yorker opens with this:
Set in Mexico, Luis Buñuel’s ruthless—almost surgical—examination of how the poor prey on one another is the most horrifying of all films about juvenile crime. The one masterwork on this subject, it stands apart from the genre by its pitilessness, its controlled passion.
FilmReference.com says, "Los olvidados was Luis Buñuel's favorite film". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 94%.



8 comments:

  1. Sounds like a very profound and touching film! Thanks for the heads up that it is a sad story as I have to be in the right frame of mind to watch this type of movie 😀. Happy Friday and Weekend! J 😊 x

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    1. It's hard to watch kids whose lives are so hard :(

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  2. I fear I'm with Jo on this. Right now I'm not sure I could take the brutality I fear this film reveals.

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    1. There's not as much physical brutality as I was thinking there might be, but the way these kids seem to be just thrown away :(

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  3. I wonder if it was remade now if it would still be as sad, or sadder in modern terms. I image there is still so many poor in Mexico City as it is such a huge city. Happy weekend. Hugs-Erika

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    1. I wonder how it looks there now. Mexico City has grown so much since then.

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  4. Wow! Very dark, but probably realistic. No happy ending here. Sadly, this is what many kids in the inner city believe, too. That there is nothing to look forward to but death. I was glad to see so many kids taking advantage of that farm, though. That was the bright spot for me.

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    1. If people had just listened to the kids a lot would've been different :(

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