Los olvidados (The young and the damned) 1950 - Gritty realism in the world of juvenile delinquents

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Luis Bunuel
Main Cast: Estela Inda, Miguel Inclan, Alfonso Mejia, Roberto Cobo, Alma Delia Fuentes

"The winner of two Cannes Film Festival awards, Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (aka The Forgotten Ones and The Young and the Damned) was the director's first international box-office success. Yet Buñuel showed no signs of curbing the outrageous iconoclasm that made him famous in Europe and South America; one of the more lasting images of the film is the clash-of-cultures shot of a glistening new skyscraper rising above the squalid slums of Mexico City. The story concerns a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose sole redeeming quality is their apparent devotion to one another. Part of the film's perverse fascination is watching Buñuel's street punks cause misery to those less fortunate. The audience immediately identifies with Pedro (Alfonso Mejía), the youngest gang member, who evinces a spark of decency; yet Pedro, like the others, remains a victim of circumstances far beyond his control.Throughout, Buñuel maintains an objective tone; it is our responsibility, not his, to judge the gang members. In Buñuel's universe, mothers turn their backs on their sons and sleep with their friends, blind beggars play sexual games with young girls, wealthy men proposition young boys, and cripples are so venomous that one feels little or no sympathy for them when they're attacked. The film's sole compassionate adult, the warden of a juvenile home, is decent and caring but ineffectual, an easily surmounted obstacle to the corruption of the outside world.
Seasoned with haunting dream sequences, Los Olvidados was the opening volley in what would turn out to be Buñuel's most creative period." - www.allmovie.com

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L'age d'or (Age of gold) 1930 - Bunuel's surrealist dream

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021577/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Luis Bunuel
Main Cast: Gaston Modot, Lya Lys

"L'age d'or was director Luis Buñuel's first feature, and was produced by the Vicomte Charles de Noailles, wealthy friend to the surrealist group. It was intended as a satire on the European bourgeoisie, and while de Noailles could have easily included himself among their number, he secretly detested them. In a sense, L'age d'or is as much de Noailles' statement as it is Buñuel's. The satire is so pointed that it borders on outright comedy, and in 1933 de Noailles and Buñuel did re-edit the film down into a two-reel comedy entitled In the Icy Wastes of Dialectical Materialism, which was distributed to left-wing theaters in Eastern Europe and Russia. Sadly, this short version has not survived. Anti-Semitic right-wingers staged a riot at the Paris premiere of L'age d'or, thinking Buñuel was Jewish. While their own organization, the League of Patriots, condemned the riot, the action did open a dialogue among French conservatives that L'age d'or was too anti-clerical, and the paper Le Figaro began to pressure the censorship board to withdraw the film's certificate. It did so on December 1, 1930.
Only three prints of the film were struck initially, and two of these were seized by authorities and destroyed. The Vicomte de Noailles hid the negatives of L'age d'or in a Paris bookshop of which he was part-owner. In 1933, a few more prints were struck, and one of these was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that same year. Buñuel claimed the notoriety of L'age d'or made it difficult for him to work in the 1930s and '40s.
Now that it has been generally available for awhile, it is easy to see that L'age d'or is technically the most accomplished of the early surrealist films. It has nothing of the brutish intensity of Un chien Andalou, nor the strange, otherworldliness of Le sang d'un poete. But it is by far the most successful of the de Noailles films in terms of progressing from scene to scene in an illogical/logical surrealist dream state, and the impact of the satire can be felt in comedies made 40 to 50 years down the line, particularly in the work of Monty Python's Flying Circus. While the beginning and end sequences of L'age d'or may feel slow, the main part of the film has lost little of its power, and is still highly amusing and mildly shocking, even today." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/lage-dor-v27795

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