Sightlines · reception
How The Young and the Damned was received
1950 · Luis Buñuel · The Young and the Damned on Sightlines
The arc
Mexico hated it in 1950 — it was yanked from theaters within days amid accusations that Buñuel had slandered the nation — then Cannes 1951 handed him Best Director, and the same film came home a triumph; it's now inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
What’s debated
Fans still argue over whether it's neorealism or an anti-neorealist surrealist rebuke — Buñuel himself scoffed at the De Sica comparison, refusing the sentimentality that school traded in.
Its footprint
The shot of a boy hurling an egg straight at the camera lens remains one of cinema's great fourth-wall assaults, and the film is the acknowledged ancestor of every street-kids classic from Pixote to City of God.
Where it stands
A cornerstone of both the Mexican canon and world cinema at large — the standard 'start here' answer for anyone entering Buñuel's Mexican period.
Did you know? Producer Óscar Dancigers was so nervous about the film's bleakness that Buñuel shot an alternate happy ending as insurance — it sat forgotten for half a century until it resurfaced in the early 2000s and is now included on restorations. Bonus: Octavio Paz personally handed out an essay championing the film at Cannes.
Named by the director
- Shoeshine (1946) — Buñuel acknowledged De Sica's portrait of abandoned boys as a spur for tackling Mexico City's street children — even as he rejected neorealism's sentimentality.