70 years of The Young and the Damned
On November 9, 1950, the film "Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)" by Luis Bunuel was released on the screens of Mexican cinemas.
The film caused a fierce outrage from the press, government, representatives of the upper and middle class, as well as Mexican trade unions, who demanded to expel Bunuel from the country for "slandering a bright reality", especially since Bunuel was of Spanish origin, and therefore, as they said would be today in Russia, was a "foreign agent". Three days after the premiere, the film was retired and banned.
However, six months later, the Mexican elite was forced to change their attitude towards Bunuel's film. The reason was that the film "Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)" was nominated for the Grand Prix of the Cannes International Film Festival, which started on April 3, 1951. The festival jury, chaired by the famous French writer Andre Maurois, however, awarded the main prize to two other films: the Swedish melodrama "Froken Julie (Miss Julie)" directed by Alf Sjoberg and the Italian comedy "Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan)" by Vittorio De Sica. Other nominees for the award included films such as "All About Eve" by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and "The Browning Version" by Anthony Asquith. But the film "Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)" by no means can be considered a loser, since Luis Bunuel received the festival's award for Best Director.
In addition to the success at the festival, the famous French poet, playwright, bard Jacques Prevert dedicated a poem to the film that instantly spread around the world. In this poem, among other things, there were the following lines: "Los Olvidados - loving but unloved children, murderer children and murder victims ... But all these children who died horribly on the screen were even livelier than many of the guests sitting in the hall on the Croisette ".
Against this background, the leadership of Mexican cinema would be embarrassed to remain on the sidelines, and as often happens, the Mexican cinematic elite rushed in the opposite direction: the film "Los olvidados" was awarded one Golden Ariel and 10 Silver Ariels (national Mexican film awards), including Bunuel - both gold and silver. This was largely due to the fact that the film was very actively bought by foreign countries.
Two years later, Luis Bunuel's film was nominated for a British BAFTA award. But the British film academics awarded their prize to the British film "The Sound Barrier" by David Lean. David Lean is undoubtedly one of the greatest directors in world cinema, but the film is pretty average. Moreover, the BAFTA prize was awarded to the "The Sound Barrier" in the category Best British Film, and in the category Best Film of any Source. However, the company of relative "losers" to Bunuel's film was "Limelight" by Charlie Chaplin, "Rashomon" by Akira Kurosawa, "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Elia Kazan, "Miracolo a Milano" by Vittorio De Sica and others. Sometimes it is more honorable to be in the company of such worthy "losers" than to become a winner due to local patriotism.
The overwhelming majority of reviews from film critics were enthusiastic. However, Bosley Crowther from The New York Times, true to his nature of grouch, gave such a characterization in his film review: "Although made with meticulous realism and unquestioned fidelity to facts, its qualifications as dramatic entertainment — or even social reportage—are dim.For it is obvious that Luis Bunuel, who directed and helped write the script, had no focus or point of reference for the squalid, depressing tale he tells. He simply has assembled an assortment of poverty-stricken folk—paupers, delinquents, lost children and parents of degraded morals—and has mixed them altogether in a vicious and shocking melange of violence, melodrama, coincidence and irony."
60 years after the release of the film "Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)" on the screens, it attracted the attention of the press and film critics again. The reason was that on August 14, 2010 in the Spanish newspaper El Pais an article by Veronica Calderon was published, the headline of which sounded like this: "Forgotten Bunuel: The director never admitted that his film, which won an award in Cannes in 1951, was based on the work of Jesus R. Guerrero". In fact, the article directly accused Bunuel, by then already dead for 17 years, of plagiarism. As the base of accusation, Veronica Calderon used the statement of Morelia Guerrero, the daughter of this very Jesus R. Guerrero, that "neither Bunuel, nor Luis Alcoriza, the co-author of the script, asked her father for permission to use his book."
The accusation, voiced in the article by Veronica Calderon, was picked up by many journalists, apparently the descendants, heirs or like-minded people of those who either pushed Bunuel out of Spain at one time, or in 1950 achieved a ban on the film in the Mexican cinemas. The accusation of plagiarism was based on three points: 1) the same name; 2) the same topic; 3) the same plot. Let us examine these charges point by point.
As for the title, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of literary and cinematic works that have the same title, but are completely different in content. Suffice it to recall the films titled "The Bodyguard". We offhand, not bothering too much, can name three films with that name. Or, for example, "Night Porter". With this name there is a novel by Irwin Shaw, and a film by Liliana Cavani, which appeared at intervals of 1 year and have completely different plots. And many, many other examples. And as far as we know, none of the authors makes any claims to others. For this is absurd.
Further, with regard to the unity of the topic - crime among street children. If this is considered a sufficient basis for accusations of plagiarism, the first to be accused of this would be Jesus Guerrero himself (or his heirs). His novel, which was actually called "Los olvidados", was written in 1944. But as far back as 1931 in the Soviet Union the film "Road to Life" directed by Nikolai Ekk was released, which became the first Soviet sound film. And if you also remember Dickens and his "Oliver Twist"? And you can still ask why similar charges were not brought against Hall Bartlett, the director of the film "The Sandpit Generals"? Maybe because Bartlett's film is based on the novel of the great Brazilian writer Jorge Amado "Capitaes da Areia (Captains of the Sands)", which was written back in 1937, ie, again, before Guerrero's work?
And finally, regarding the plot similarity. Only those who have not read Guerrero's novel (which is not surprising due to the little-known of this writer and his works), or did not see the film by Luis Bunuel, can use it as a basis for accusations of plagiarism. Since there is absolutely nothing in common in the content and plot of these works. You can verify this by reading the summary of Guerrero's novel here.
In short, there was another fraudulent attempt to profit from the late genius, which, of course, ended in nothing. But, as they say, "the residue remained", since the English-language Wikipedia retains information about these accusations, but very vaguely informs about their groundlessness.
For more than half a century, everyone has known that the original film consists of 8 reels with film tape. However, in 2002, the 9th reel was accidentally found, which contained an alternative ending, in which, as a result of the struggle between El Jaibo and Pedro, the El Jaibo falls from the roof and dies, and Pedro takes the stolen 50 pesos from him, returns them director of the farm school and returns there himself. Judge for yourself which of the endings is better: the one that has been known to viewers for over 50 years and evaluated by the jury of film festivals, and has become the canonical, or "happy ending", apparently intended exclusively for the American audience.
The modern moviegoer highly appreciated Luis Bunuel's film "Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)". In our opinion, this is the best film by Luis Bunuel of the Mexican period of his work. Although Andrei Tarkovsky considered the best film of all Bunuel's work as a whole, his picture "Nazarin", which was also created in the Mexican period of the great Master's work. 73% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave Luis Bunuel's "Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)" ratings from 8 to 10. Taking this into account and the above, FilmGourmand's rating of the film was 9,001, making it 157th in the Golden Thousand.
