The curious thing about Carlos Saura’s debut feature film as
a writer-director Los Golfos (The Delinquents) is that it’s kind of a Spanish
neorealist analogue to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s streetwise Accatone while
also foreshadowing the grisly bullfighting realities of Francesco Rosi’s The
Moment of Truth. Made in 1960
(unreleased until 1962 due to Spanish censorship) across Madrid in the first
Spanish film shot on location including but not limited to the Legazpi market,
slums of Manzanares and the Cementerio de la Almudena, the film carried over
documentary techniques from the director’s roots while ushering in a new
filmmaking force commandeered by Luis Buñuel (whom Saura would later make a
film about) producer Pere Portabella. Utilizing
untrained actors for the cast and notably only using existing set pieces with
rough yet luminous 1.33:1 camerawork by Juan Julio Baena, against censorship
the film was nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes and is regarded
as one of the top ten greatest films set in Madrid by one of Spain’s soon-to-be
most prolific and respected auteurs.
The story and fleeting approach is simple enough involving a
group of impoverished Andalusian street rats in Madrid: Julian (Manuel Zarzo),
Ramon (Luis Marin), Juan (Oscar Cruz), El Chato (Juanjo Losada), Paco (Ramon
Rubio) and Manolo (Rafael Vargas).
Struggling to survive the poverty line consisting of beat down suburban and
shantytown Madrid, they bounce from petty scheme to robbery employing
everything from pickpocketing to outright besiegement and physical assault to
make ends meet as young criminals.
Among
them, Juan also holds a regular job as a porter in the Legazpi fruit market and
dreams of becoming a serious competitor in bullfighting. Sensing their friend’s dilemma in not having
enough money to enter the competition, they devise to pull off their biggest
heist yet in order to raise the funds needed.
It sounds idealistic in theory but in practice proves tragic and
consequential for the ragtag group of migrants who put their lives on the line
to help their friend out.
Though like its successor The Moment of
Truth reveals the viciousness of bullfighting, as a whole the film is
primarily a study of Madrid youth culture and as a such is a marked departure
from the usual conservative squeaky clean image of the father-son-bonding
seeing these kids as lost souls or feral animals navigating a confused if not
battered national identity. As with Accatone,
seeing well dressed poor characters of 1960s Madrid navigating the barren
broken landscapes foraging for survival is a starkly hot, almost boiling vista
which speaks not to the young delinquents’ criminality but to the despair of
their situation.
Limited to 2,500 copies, the set includes an extensive introduction by
former Filmoteca director Catalunya Esteve Riambau, thirteen minutes of
censored scenes, two early short films by Saura and an interview with Ehsan
Khoshbakht on the film’s lingering influences on Spanish cinema as a
whole. Also included with the reversible
sleeve art and time-honored OBI-spines is a collectible booklet featuring
pictures and original essay writing by Mar Diestro-Dopido and reprints of
committee documents requesting cuts as well as the extensive restoration
process undertaken. Looking at it now, Los
Golfos is a marvelously tragic neorealist regard for then-1960s Madrid as
well as being a youth culture film and the announcement of a major new movement
in film and the career of its soon-to-be prolific artist behind it.
--Andrew Kotwicki