Buñuel as Delinquent Director: Los Olvidados

Lecture & Film „Kino am Abgrund der Moderne. Die Filme von Luis Buñuel“

Vortrag von Dudley Andrew (New Haven)

LOS OLVIDADOS (1950) was the third feature Luis Buñuel made after having left Europe during the Franco takeover of Spain, and it was the first over which he had real control.  Considered a nasty national portrait in Mexico, it gained stupendous acclaim on the continent, where it was championed by André Bazin, with whom he would form a fast friendship. My talk distinguishes Bunuel’s film by interrogating its subject, delinquency.  I will treat delinquency less as a theme in world cinema than as a goad and challenge to directors from De Sica to Truffaut. LOS OLVIDADOS maintains the central position here since Buñuel might be termed a delinquent director, only partially reformed and re-educated to enter civilized society, let alone the bourgeoisie. Buñuel’s pitiless and satiric tone was not reserved for the clergy, the military, and the upper classes; it extended to social institutions and empathetic individuals serving the betterment of the downtrodden. His cinema would not be tamed or compromised, since cinema to him was instinctual and amoral. That’s why, as filmed by Bunuel, its repellent aspects make LOS OLVIDADOS a work that retains its razor-sharp edge to slice the sensibility of even sophisticated and jaded viewers seventy years after it premiered.

Dudley Andrew is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and of Film Studies at Yale. Biographer and translator of André Bazin, he has authored What Cinema Is! and edited Opening Bazin.

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Filmvorführung: LOS OLVIDADOS, Mexiko 1950, 85 Min.

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Karten können jeweils auf den Seiten des Deutschen Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF) gekauft werden.

Kuratiert von Daniel Fairfax und Vinzenz Hediger