Los Olvidados Film Analysis

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In the wildly popular Mexican film, Los olvidados (1950), Spanish director Luis Buñuel exposes the harsh realities of life in Mexico during the 1950’s. Luis Buñuel’s work on Los olvidados portrays a societal loss for all hope due to crime and violence as an infinitely vicious cycle, coupled with addressing the lack of reform for dilapidated living conditions throughout Mexico. In Los olvidados, Buñuel follows Pedro (Alfonso Mejía) a neglected bastard, and El Jaibo (Roberto Cobo) the leader of a gang of homeless children loitering in vacant lots. For Pedro, and the rest of the cast, a series of unfortunate outcomes have been strung together though common ignorance and a lack of self-control. Luis Buñuel’s use of focal length, editing, and dialogue …show more content…

His mother had just signed off on having Pedro join the reform school, and was spending her last moments with him in his cell. Pedro clearly feels abandoned by his mother much like the people of 1950’s Mexico and the government. There hadn’t been any new reforms for assistance or for modern living conditions. At the beginning of the scene, Pedro is in a dialogue with the principal to determine what good could come out of his opportunity. The camera is shooting in medium close-up and medium long allowing the viewer to perceive the interaction as sincere, and somewhat intimate even though three people are in the shot. The settings switch which involves a change in focal length, panning to an extreme long shot of the chicken range and boy collecting eggs. Pedro shown unfocused in a medium shot, sitting, being unproductive, and then is handed a bucket of eggs. Pedro takes an egg as the camera shift to a close-up shot of him forcing a needle into the shell. After a failed attempt to extract the yolk Pedro comes into focus, angrily throws the egg, and it cracks on the film lens. According to …. “Marcel Oms describes this action in term of aggression against bourgeois perceptions of reality.” (1995, p. 77) This action could be interpreted as a uncontrollable emotion, possibly when the generational anger has transitioned to

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