Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.
Buñuel's Los Olvidados is a landmark of world cinema — its unflinching neorealist portrait of Mexico City slum youth, laced with surrealist dream sequences, is singular in conception and execution. The plot is a rigorous, unsentimental tragedy that refuses easy moralizing, earning a genuine 4. Cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa is strikingly composed with brutal, almost documentary immediacy balanced against expressionist touches. Novelty is very high: the fusion of neorealist social critique with Buñuelian surrealism and savage irony is completely distinctive. Acting from the largely non-professional cast is credible and raw but uneven in places, landing at a solid 3. The ending, while appropriately bleak and thematically resonant, is somewhat abrupt — it delivers impact but feels slightly compressed compared to the power built earlier.