Los Olvidados (12A) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Originally released in 1950, Buñuel's portrait of juvenile delinquents in the slums of Mexico City is harrowing yet pitiless. Its story revolves around a street hoodlum, El Jaibo (Roberto Cobo), and the his vicious influence on a younger boy, Pedro (Alfonso Mejia). Buñuel resists sentimentalising the poor: they are ruthless, self-seeking, even murderous, and will betray a friend to save themselves. Nor is it a generational issue, for old cripples and mothers are as degenerate as the urchins. The film, though harshly realistic, is remarkable for a terrifying dream that Pedro has about his mother - for one critic, "perhaps the greatest of all movie dream sequences" - and reminds us that Buñuel was, among other things, the great dirty surrealist of cinema.