The Young and the Damned is a 1950 film. Mexican. At that time, Mexico was producing historical films—we see brave men on horseback, exquisite scenes of young men’s romantic declarations to beautiful women, drinking and revelry, all of that. Then Luis Buñuel wrote the story of children and youth wandering the streets of Mexico City, their poverty and the various social decadence it spawned. He made the film in the style of Italian neo-realism. Production, photography, direction—even the performances were carried out by unknown or barely-known artists. The result was worth watching. Mexico was astonished to see that cinema could be made this way! Buñuel brought to his lens, unaltered, the life-reality of the majority poor and desperate people living in big cities of that era—or more precisely, the dark aspects of life. He was criticized, his film was censored. A storm of debate swept through Mexico. How dare a Spanish filmmaker make such a film about Mexico without knowing anything about it? Most people’s position was against The Young and the Damned. Then something happened. At the 1951 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the award for Best Direction. Critics’ reviews and comments were in Buñuel’s favor. When the festival ended, Mexican authorities lifted the ban on the film, it was shown in theaters, and success came immediately. By the end of 1951, the film won eleven Ariel awards. The Ariel is Mexico’s Oscar.
Why did I drag this out so long? Buñuel’s career could have ended with that film if he hadn’t received recognition on an international platform like Cannes. Afterward, when making films, he never had to worry about any kind of support or budget. So many talents are lost due to lack of due recognition. In that respect, Buñuel was fortunate. Later, many renowned filmmakers including Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and Kubrick mentioned The Young and the Damned when speaking about Buñuel. In this important film, the work of surrealism has become part of history. Pedro’s dream sequence is an extraordinary treasure for world cinema. When the street delinquents beat the blind man and he lay bloodied on the street, we see a chicken in front of him. When the police shot and killed Jaibo while he was fleeing, the image of a running dog flashed through Jaibo’s mind before death. Such application of surrealism was unimaginable for Mexican cinema. Buñuel told his audience that real life is not a happy thing—real life consists of ordinary people’s problems, emotions, misery, and deprivation. What he showed in the film stirred the conscience of thousands of people worldwide. Occasionally, some Buñuels are born in cinema, who stun our consciousness, nakedly presenting reality before our conscience. They tell us that in real life it doesn’t always happen that “thereafter they lived happily ever after”—countless children are born in this world who, despite having good intentions, cannot do anything good due to their environment, that poverty and crime are the true mirror of the world, that humans can commit hideous crimes even with completely cold minds.
This film is the authentic mirror of the lives of those poor, destitute, slum-dwellers who constantly battle on the streets for life and livelihood, whom we never even think to remember. Many films have been made about devastated childhood and youth, but none of them have surpassed The Young and the Damned. Social commentary, political anxiety, artistic innovation, eccentric creativity, sharp satire, subtle humor, and the unique measured use of visuals have kept Buñuel foremost among filmmakers. When making this film, Buñuel was 50 years old. The artistic presentation of psychology in the film announces Buñuel’s experience, while the film’s honesty and courage also bring his youthful aspect before us. The tendency Buñuel had to break the establishment of conventional ideas inspired him to remain one hundred percent faithful to the film’s atmosphere. In this film, the blind person, the mother, Ojitos, the girl, her grandfather, and the other children—they don’t always appear on screen exactly as we would like to see them. Buñuel showed us their complex psychology exactly as it “happens to be,” not as it “should be.” We become annoyed, angry, and disappointed with some of their actions and thoughts, yet the next moment we think, this could indeed happen—they too are flesh-and-blood humans!
Some scenes never leave our heads. When the girl pours milk on her bare feet, our sensual consciousness awakens at least somewhat. Pedro suddenly throws an egg toward the camera (as if looking at us and asking, “Are you secretly watching my suffering?”). When Pedro’s mother is cleaning the house and washing her feet, her cleavage and thighs become exposed, arousing desire in Jaibo upon seeing this. (Of course, the director has left us to our imagination regarding whether she responded to his call.) In a moment of rage, Ojitos suddenly thinks, why not just kill this blind old man with this stone! (That old man is the one who provides for his food and shelter!) When Pedro’s mother is beating some roosters, Pedro’s nerves seem to become numb watching that scene. When adults mentally torture and deprive Pedro in various ways, when Pedro’s mother can never believe in his desire to become good, and as a result Pedro lives in a kind of devastated mentality, it touches us deeply. The sequence of Pedro’s dream about the piece of meat simultaneously plunges the viewer into anger and despair. Mud and blood smeared everywhere, pigs, donkeys, roosters and hens, dogs and other animals’ contextual presence, the disabled, women’s bare feet… these are some of Buñuel’s favorite tools in filmmaking. There’s no exception here either.
The final fate of Jaibo and Pedro is the most powerful aspect of this film. While Jaibo’s destiny turned out as we wanted to see it, Pedro’s destiny didn’t quite turn out “to our liking” or “as we hoped.” Yet Buñuel showed it that way because that was more realistic. Though we might call the naked king a “king without clothes,” Buñuel would call him a “naked king.” The reason is that the word “without clothes” doesn’t clearly convey the king’s exact condition at that moment. Someone who doesn’t have many clothes, who has only one or two garments, we also call “without clothes,” but the word “naked” has only one meaning, and that’s what expresses the king’s true condition at that moment.
Reading Buñuel’s autobiography “Last Sigh” translated by Arupratan Ghosh, I learned that Buñuel spent five months in Mexico’s slums and poor localities wearing his worst and dirtiest clothes, solely to create the accurate atmosphere and characters’ language for the film. (When writing “Padma River Boatman,” Manik Bandopadhyay spent days upon days in fishing villages. Creating classics requires such labor and time.) When this film was released in Mexico, everyone attacked it on the grounds that it had insulted the honor of Mexico and Mexican citizens. At that time, the film ran for only 4 days. Buñuel was given death threats for the crime of fabricating false nonsense about Mexico, and he was physically assaulted. Only after achieving unexpected success at the Cannes festival were Buñuel and his creation warmly embraced in Mexico. The Young and the Damned is a subtle and precise portrait of Mexico’s vagrants, beggars, street hooligans, juvenile delinquents, poverty-stricken people’s immorality, corruption, criminal tendencies, hideous activities, and way of life. Buñuel created this invaluable treasure of world cinema in just 25 days: 21 days of shooting, 4 days of editing.
Footnote. I am not a film connoisseur, and it’s not easy for me to write about Luis Buñuel’s work. While preparing this piece, I have taken help from the book “Last Sigh” and various internet sources.