MAGNET’s Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Los Olvidados (1950, in Spanish with English subtitles, 85 minutes)
The sociopathic street kids portrayed in Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (“the forgotten”) make the troubled teenagers from 1955’s Rebel Without A Cause seem like country-club brats by comparison. Born in Spain in 1900, Buñuel befriended both Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca in college before becoming a citizen of Mexico. Though some of Buñuel’s films are similar to the Italian school of neo-realism (cheaply shot on location with unknown actors and working-class themes), there are touches of surrealism found in his work, as well.
A pack of kids, ranging from 13 to 16, are playing bullfight games with each other in a Mexico City square when the word gets out: El Jaibo has escaped from reform school. “Working is for donkeys,” says one of the punks as he passes around a pack of cigarettes.
Six inches taller than the rest, the rail-thin Jaibo (Roberto Cobo) is dressed in overalls with no shirt when he rejoins his former buddies. “What’s it like inside? Is it cool?” asks the shorter Pedro (Alfonso Mejia). “The street is better. That’s why I escaped as soon as I could,” says Jaibo, always on the lookout for passing police cars. “Were you inside because of Julian?” asks Pedro. “That rat! He’ll get what’s coming to him,” sneers Jaibo. “I learned a lot in jail. Do as I say, and you’ll always have money.”
Jaibo takes his boys into the marketplace in search of easy cash. They find an old blind street musician with a guitar, a drum and a rack of wooden pipes around his neck, introducing a song: “This is from the time when women stayed home instead of going out and cheating on their husbands.” The boys follow the old man home and gang up on him, tripping him and slamming a large rock through his drum, then taking his cash.
Later, a legless beggar on a small platform with wheels accidentally bumps into El Jaibo. Enraged, his boys lift the amputee from his cart and toss him onto the sidewalk like an upside-down turtle. Jaibo runs off with the man’s cart and pushes it as far as he can down a steep hill.
Pedro leads Jaibo to the place where Julian (Javier Amezcua) works. “I spent a year in jail because of you,” Jaibo shouts at Julian. “If I’d turned you in, I’d say so,” reasons Julian. Believing Jaibo is incapacitated because his arm’s in a sling, Julian turns away. But Jaibo has a large rock concealed inside the bandage and brings it down on the back of Julian’s head. He finishes off the unconscious boy with a stout tree limb. Always thinking, Jaibo splits Julian’s money with Pedro to make him an accomplice. “I’ll get 10 years and you’ll get five if we’re caught,” he warns.
