LOS OLVIDADOS

“With one fell swoop (and the single slash of an eyeball), director Luis Buñuel's famed first short film, 1929's Un chien andalou, announced the emergence of a major filmmaker, successfully transferred surrealist sensibilities onto celluloid, and ensured that untold generations of queasy film students would wrestle with their gag reflex. In terms of a calling
card, it may have been a little too successful, as the outraged response to it (and his subsequent feature-length middle-class attack L'Age d'Or) drove the director into virtual exile. After decades on the skids, however, Buñuel made a monster comeback with 1950s street kids saga Los Olvidados. Winner of a Best Director award at Cannes, it flopped in his native Mexico, but served as a clear announcement to the rest of the world that he was back, on his own uniquely prickly terms. Now, courtesy of a spiffy new print, it serves as a sterling initiation to the director's unique, devastating combination of clear-eyed realism and left-field Freudian imagery. Set amid the slums of Mexico City, the film follows a roving pack of abandoned street kids as they struggle to survive a typical day, which includes robbing blind men, enacting ruthless vengeance on imagined squealers, and swigging milk straight from the donkey… Buñuel's singularly unvarnished look at life on the streets still impresses. The recent discovery of an abandoned happy ending (played after the credits) only enhances the film's bitter, unforgettable overall dart to the heart. “ — Andrew Wright, The Stranger

Driven into two decades of virtual exile by the hostile response to L’Age d’Or Luis Bunuel’s comeback film, Los Olvidados (Mexico, 1950) won him the Best Director award at Cannes. Set amid the slums of Mexico City, the film follows a roving pack of abandoned street kids as they struggle to survive a typical day, which includes robbing blind men, enacting ruthless vengeance on imagined squealers, and swigging milk straight from the donkey. And it served as a clear announcement to the rest of the world that Bunuel was back on his own uniquely prickly terms.