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David Parkinson follows the signs from Luis Buñuel’s triumphant Mexican slice of misery to the current Latin American new wave of films with this Best Director prize winner at Cannes in 1951.

With Los Olvidados, Luis Buñuel took neo-realism into unchartered surrealist territory, and ignored producer Oscar Dancigers's request for a commercial children's film akin to Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine (1946) to reveal the dire poverty that existed in the heart of Mexico City.

Basing his screenplay on reform school case studies and his own observations of shanty life, Buñuel used street kid Alfonso Mejía's betrayal by hero Roberto Cobo to examine the depths into which humanity descends when all hope is lost. But there's nothing sentimental or judgemental about the drama, which Buñuel laced with disconcerting visions of cruelty that so enraged local critics that Dancigers was forced to withdraw the film after two days. However, when Buñuel won the Best Director prize at Cannes for Los Olvidados in 1951, his reputation was restored after 18 years in the cinematic wilderness.

Seen six decades on, the film's influence on the recent Latin American new wave is readily evident, most notably on such favela exposés as City of God (2002).

 

David Parkinson on 26th August 2010
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