The Young and the Damned

1950 drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A kid tries to make good choices amidst gangs and poverty.

It's not a Bunuel movie until somebody has a dream with a chicken. I have a theory that you can tell how good a director is by how he or she utilizes chickens. This has chickens--both subconscious ones and real flesh 'n' feathers ones--and it's also got a lot of eggs, one thrown directly at the camera. I'm not sure if this was available in 3D in AMC theaters back in 1950, but that egg scene would have had people diving to the sticky theater floors to avoid the egging.

I'm not sure which comes first in the movie--the chicken or the egg. I do know that the juvenile protagonist, as well as the posse he runs around with, are in a situation where it's nearly impossible for them not to avoid that egging. They're splattered by circumstances, yolk clotting in their hair like yellowed fate. In this Bunuelian version of Mexico City slums, there's little nurturing, especially for Pedro whose mother wants nothing to do with him. So Pedro depends on nature and instinct, but he's a baby bird and has never had anybody chew up worms for him. But hey, he's getting by, and he's trying to do it by being good. Unfortunately for you, young Pedro, Bunuel's setting doesn't make survival by doing things right very easy, and those chickens are probably snickering behind your back, Pedro. And the dogs dancing around in people clothes. And the donkey that acts exactly like Lassie at one point, braying to another character that so-and-so has fallen in a proverbial well. Or that other goat having it's teat sucked by a child. That's the world Bunuel has these young and/or damned characters inhabiting--the kind where a kid is sucking milk directly from a goat.

The first bit of violence that takes place in this film happens in front of a building that is the process of being built. In fact, there doesn't even look like any progress is being made on that building, at least in the image I have in my memory. No crane, no workers, no other equipment. It's just the skeleton of this building, the idea of a building, a building in its formative years so to speak. I think that's a telling detail, but the blind one-man-band, the character Bunuel tricked me into liking before hinting that he's a pederast, probably doesn't care all that much about that because somebody just put a foot through his drum.

There's great imagery here on what appears to be a budget of a few pesos. Foggy streets at night, a character framed by a cactus and train smoke, milk being poured on a young girl's legs. There's a kid with nightmare teeth, the kind that might cause the guy with no legs--he appears to have rolled from the future right out of a Jodorowsky movie--to feel sorry for the kid. I didn't get a look at his teeth though. Maybe he had no legs and bad teeth.

It's not a Bunuel movie unless there's a wacky dream sequence. What a creepy vibe that whole sequence has with characters shot in reverse and the obligatory slow-motion chicken. It's the kind of scene that probably made a young David Lynch want to rub a dove on a lady's back.

"I wish we could lock up poverty instead of these men."

I have nothing to say about that quote.