Los Olvidados

Infobox_Film
name = Los Olvidados

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caption =
director = Luis Buñuel
producer = Óscar Dancigers
writer = Luis Alcoriza
Luis Buñuel
starring = Alfonso Mejía
Estela Inda
Miguel Inclán
Roberto Cobo
Alma Delia Fuentes
Francisco Jambrina
Jesús Navarro
music = Rodolfo Halffter
Gustavo Pittaluga
cinematography = Gabriel Figueroa
editing = Carlos Savage
distributor = Koch-Lorber Films
released = December 9, 1950 (Mexico)
runtime = 80 min.
language = Spanish
budget =
imdb_id = 0042804|

"Los Olvidados" ("The Forgotten Ones") is a 1950 Mexican film directed by Spanish-Mexican filmaker Luis Buñuel.

Óscar 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 is considered number two among the 100 best movies of the cinema of Mexico and earned "Best Director" and "Best Film" awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

Cast

* Estela Inda as Pedro's Mother
* Miguel Inclán as Don Carmelo, the blind man
* Alfonso Mejía 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
* Efraín Arauz as "Cacarizo"
* Jorge Pérez as "Pelón"
* Javier Amézcua as Julián
* Mário Ramírez as "Ojitos", the lost boy
* Victorio Blanco old man at the market
* José Loza retired man #1
* Rubén Campos retired man #2
* José López retired man #3
* Daniel Corona bum #1
* Roberto Navarrete bum #2
* Enedina Díaz de León tortilla maker
* Antulio Jiménez Pons as the chicharrón maker
* Patricia Jiménez Pons
* Héctor López Portillo as the judge
* Antonio Martínez as the little boy
* Ramón Martínez as Nacho, Pedro's brother
* Ángel Merino as Carlos, principal's assistant
* José Moreno Fuentes as the policeman
* Humberto Mostí as corrigendo
* Francisco Muller as Mendoza
* Diana Ochoa as "Cacarizo"'s Mother
* Salvador Quiroz as the blacksmith
* Charles Rooner as the elegant pederast
* Ramón Sánchez as the torta salesman
* Ignacio Solorzano carnival owner
* Juan Villegas as "Cacarizo"'s grandfather
* José Luis Echeverría
* Miguel Funes Jr.
* Rosa Pérez

Plot

The film is about a group of destitute children and their misfortunes in the slums of Mexico City, finally culminating in death for the two principal characters. "El Jaibo" escapes juvenile jail and, together with Pedro and some other friends, attempts to rob Don Carmelo, a blind street musician. After El Jaibo kills the man who supposedly sent him to jail the situation continues to sharpen, until El Jaibo meets Pedro in a final confrontation.

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 once 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).

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

* [http://cinemexicano.mty.itesm.mx/peliculas/olvidados.html "Los olvidados"] at the cinema of Mexico site of the ITESM