Heartless and heartbreaking, Luis Buñuel’s early masterpiece charts the dead-end lives of Mexico City slum kids, adding vivid surrealistic touches and nihilistic cruelty to Neo-Realistic style. A compact story revolves around three kids: a reform-school runaway who's a charismatic, daringly likable sociopath with revenge on his mind; his younger tagalong pal, not a bad kid by nature, trying to work his way back into his mother’s good graces, but easily led astray; and an abandoned street kid, picked up by a blind street beggar as guide/helper. Jobless, illiterate, most of the boys live aimlessly on the street, waiting for a chance to make a score, grab lunch from a street vendor, or simply cheer from the sidelines. Buñuel gives these thugs odd, unforgettable grace notes, often at their worst moments, so each petty theft or random act of violence has a personal sting. (Only girls & mothers seem to work.) Then poking the wound with glimmers of quickly sabotaged hope, or a dream of magical realism twisted with nightmarish horror. All crushingly brought out in Gabriel Figueroa’s b&w cinematography in spite of the bad prints now generally available.
DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Vittorio De Sica’s SHOESHINE/’46 an obvious influence. So too Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST, with Oliver’s waylaid bookstore trip for his kindly benefactor lifted pretty directly.
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