The Young One - La Joven
Mexiko 1960
Director: Luis Buñuel
Producers: Georges P. Werker (for Producciones Olmeca)
Screenwriters: Luis Buñuel, Hugo Butler Addis (based on a novel by Peter Matthiesen)
Director of Photography: Gabriel Figueroa
Music: Jesús Zarzosa, Léon Bibb
Cast: Zachary Scott, Bernie Hamilton, Kay Meersman, Graham Denton, Claudio Brook.
Awards: Special Mention at Cannes Film Festival (1960)
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A Black man accused of rape arrives on an island. Figuratively speaking, he brings with
himself the central plot lines as well as the main theme of The Young One.
The theme of the film is racism, which is still deeply rooted in American society (the
film was shot in the USA and takes place on an island that belongs to it). In this
particular case it is exposed by the setting on an outlying island and by the extreme
way in which it is depicted.
To scorn the Black is part of "good breeding" (which will also be true seven years
later, in 1967, in Norman Jewison´s In the Heat of the Night). This malignant
"rumour" doesn´t spread only in cities but even on a wild island far from civilization.
All male white adult characters are presented as racists: the two hunters as militant
ones and the priest as a closet one. Later the priest takes the side of the Black man
(who didn´t rape anybody, off course), and at the very end he is unwillingly joined by
one of the hunters.
The hunter´s decision to let the Black go (i.e. not to kill him) results from the
second thematic line of the film - his love for the girl he lives with. In spite of the
very delicately developed Lolitaesque shades, the erotic plot, as well as the whole
film, seems to be somewhat poor and superficial.
Přílišná filmařská pohodlnost a krotkost nás nutí pátrat po podstatě. Buñuel prohlásil,
The lack of filming effort and courage makes us ask ourselves: why? Buñuel said he had
made the film with love. The question is if we should believe him or apply the main
theme of the film (the lack of freedom) to his own work as the director.
"The refusal of Manichaeism was probably the main reason why the film was a failure.
After its New York premiere at Christmas of 1960 it was attacked from left, right and
center. To be frank, nobody liked it. A Harlem newspaper wrote that I should be hung
head downwards on a streetlamp on the Fifth Avenue. The film provoked violent reactions
that were my lifelong destiny. Yet I had shot the film with love. It simply wasn´t
lucky. It didn´t fit in the moral norm." L.B.
Plus:
There is a typical surrealistic scene in the film - a racoon attacks and kills a
hen. This sequence has no real "meaning", but is reminiscent of the one from The
Forgotten with the director´s favourite hens.
Claudio Brook, who plays the title role in Simon of the Desert, appears in the role of the priest.
The Young One is the second film in English in Buñuel´s filmography. The
first one was the film Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
[ translation: Sabina Poláková ]
Links:
IMDb - record in the internet film database
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