The Young and the Damned · reception & legacy
1950 · Luis Buñuel
How The Young and the Damned has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Mexico hated it in 1950 — it was yanked from theatres 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.
Named by the director
Influences Luis Buñuel has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- 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.