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Los Olvidados
Directed by	Luis Buñuel
Produced by	Óscar Dancigers
Written by	Luis Alcoriza Luis Buñuel
Starring	Alfonso Mejía Estela Inda Miguel Inclán Roberto Cobo Alma Delia Fuentes Francisco Jambrina Jesús Navarro
Music by	Rodolfo Halffter Gustavo Pittaluga
Cinematography	Gabriel Figueroa
Editing by	Carlos Savage
Distributed by	Koch-Lorber Films
Release date(s)	December 9, 1950 (Mexico)
Running time	80 min.
Language	Spanish
IMDb profile

Los olvidados (The Forgotten Ones) is a film of the cinema of Mexico directed by Spanish-born Luis Buñuel.

Óscar Dancigers, the producer, asked Buñuel to direct this film after the success of the 1949 film El gran calavera. Buñuel already had a script ready titled ¡Mi huerfanito jefe! about a boy who sells lottery tickets. However, Dancigers had in mind a more realistic and serious depiction of children in poverty in Mexico City.

After conducting some research, Jesús Camacho and Buñuel came up with a script that Dancigers was pleased with. The film can be seen in the tradition of social realism, although it also contains elements of surrealism present in much of Buñuel's work.

It is considered number two among the 100 best movies of the cinema of Mexico and earned Best Director and Best Film awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot 3 Analysis 4 References 5 External links

• Estela Inda as Pedro's Mother
• Miguel Inclán as Don Carmelo, the blind man
• Alfonso Mejía as Pedro
• Roberto Cobo as "El Jaibo"
• Alma Delia Fuentes as Meche
• Francisco Jambrina as the principal of the rural school
• Jesús Navarro as Julián's father
• Efraín Arauz as "Cacarizo"
• Jorge Pérez as "Pelón"
• Javier Amézcua as Julián
• Mário Ramírez as "Ojitos", the lost boy
• Victorio Blanco old man at the market
• José Loza retired man #1
• Rubén Campos retired man #2
• José López retired man #3
• Daniel Corona bum #1
• Roberto Navarrete bum #2
• Enedina Díaz de León tortilla maker
• Antulio Jiménez Pons as the chicharrón maker
• Patricia Jiménez Pons
• Héctor López Portillo as the judge
• Antonio Martínez as the little boy
• Ramón Martínez as Nacho, Pedro's brother
• Ángel Merino as Carlos, principal's assistant
• José Moreno Fuentes as the policeman
• Humberto Mostí as corrigendo
• Francisco Muller as Mendoza
• Diana Ochoa as "Cacarizo"'s Mother
• Salvador Quiroz as the blacksmith
• Charles Rooner as the elegant pederast
• Ramón Sánchez as the torta salesman
• Ignacio Solorzano carnival owner
• Juan Villegas as "Cacarizo"'s grandfather
• José Luis Echeverría
• Miguel Funes Jr.
• Rosa Pérez

The film is about a group of destitute children and their misfortunes, finally culminating in death for the two principal characters. "El Jaibo" escapes juvenile jail and with Pedro and another friend attempt to rob Don Carmelo. El Jaibo then kills the man who supposedly sent him to jail in the presence of Pedro.

Thematically, Los Olvidados is similar to Buñuel's earlier Spanish film, Las Hurdes; both films deal with the never-ending cycle of poverty and despair. Los Olvidados, is especially interesting because although “Buñuel employed … elements of Italian neorealism,” a concurrent movement across the Atlantic Ocean marked by “outdoor locations, nonprofessional actors, low budget productions, and a focus on the working classes,” Los Olvidados is not a neorealist film (Fernandez, 42). “Neorealist reality is incomplete, conventional, and above all rational,” Buñuel once wrote in a 1953 essay titled "Poetry and Cinema," “The poetry, the mystery, all that completes and enlarges tangible reality is utterly lacking” (Sklar, 324). Los Olvidados contains such surrealistic shots as when “a boy throws an egg at the camera lens, where it shatters and drips” or a scene in which a boy has a dream in slow-motion (Sklar, 324).

• Fernandez, Walter, Jr. “A Directory of Dynamic Directors: Luis Buñuel.” Cinema Editor Fourth Quarter 2005: 42-43.
• Sklar, Robert. Film: An International History of the Medium. [London]: Thames and Hudson, [c. 1990].

• (Spanish) Los olvidados at the cinema of Mexico site of the ITESM