Los Olvidados (1950)

Los Olvidados (1950) aka The Young and the Damned

Unsentimental (an apparently defenseless, blind guy studs his walking stick with a nail, and even the 'good guy' characters are one step away from violent action, ready to pull a knife or to grab a stone to bash someone's brains in) but powerful and emotionally charged portrait of children living in poverty in the slums and shantytowns in the outskirts of Mexico City.

Part Dickens (Luis Buñuel is not afraid to borrow from classic orphaned/abandoned children literature), part Collodi (the main story is the relationship between Pinocchio and Lampwick, but gone horribly wrong) but mostly a social realistic Buñuel with some surreal elements, the movie tells the story of Pedro, whose mother was raped when she was fourteen, and his life in the streets.

Pedro has a problematic relationship with jailbroken El Jaibo (a name that might be translated as 'the crab.') El Jaibo kills Julian, one of the gang, and since Pedro is a witness to the murder, (he also share the profits,) he becomes implicated in the crime even when he is not initially responsible for it.
The two end up on the run, even when neither is truly suspected.

Witness to all of this (and audience identification figure) is a country boy nicknamed Ojitos (literally 'Little Eyes', but also 'Big Eyes,') who was abandoned by his father in the public marketplace and hired by a blind musician to be his guide.

It is the blind musician who first defines the character of the boy "Tu tienes tus ojitos" "You have your eyes (to see with)". But later, Meche, a kindly girl, who befriends the boy independently names him.
His job is to see and be a witness to the tragedy and the drama that develops around him.

The blind musician, a relic of a time past when the dictator Porfirio Diaz ruled with an iron fist, rues for the time when elders were respected, but then the rest of the time is spent proving to the audience that the sorry state of the world is precisely because the elder prey on the young, and clearly deserve no respect: Ojitos is abandoned by his father; Julian's father is the town drunk; Pedro's mother is distant and cold and refuses to feed or give warmth to Pedro.
In the main, and more lengthy surreal moment Pedro asks her for bread, and she gives him a handful of raw meat instead - which is then stolen by El Jaibo.

The bread/meat substitution may be somewhat disturbing, but the raw meat clearly stands in for more than mere physical sustenance. In an earlier scene, the other children were delighted their mother brought meat, so there is that.
But also while Pedro is away, El Jaibo hangs around Pedro's mother and they eventually have an affair.
El Jaibo steals the much needed physical closeness that Pedro does not get (Pedro asks at one point to be hit,) which causes additional feelings of guilt in the mother.

Adults also exploit children to use as living motors in an amusement park, we see children working the (pretty decrepit) rides while at the same time other children, not that much different from them, enjoy them.
With Pedro on the run, a predatory man offers him money on the street; the blind musician (also revealed by Ojitos to sell quack remedies) gropes Meche; even El Jaibo, the main source of trouble in the story is older than Pedro.

The movie starts with a the bunk, optimistic opening narration on how it is meant to be an educational or inspirational document looking for solutions, but Bunuel's treatment leaves little hope for any such thing.
When beneficent authorities finally intervene and identify the problem ("A veces deberiamos castigarlos a ustedes por lo que hacen con sus hijos" "Sometimes we should punish you for what you do to your children,") it is already too late.

Pedro is an ill fit in the work farm, (in the second surreal moment of the film, an egg is thrown and smashes against the camera lens,) he attacks the other children and kills some chickens with a heavy stick (animal cruelty warning goes here,) in a scene which not only visually duplicates the killing of Julian, but generationally connects the violence of his mother, who also kills a chicken in the same manner, to his own.
It is mere moments before he is out in the street and encounters trouble again.

It might even be too late for Ojitos, who is already well on his way to becoming a victim like Pedro and his mother, or, even El Jaibo, who never shows any redeeming qualities, but nevertheless reveals fragility and that he has been a victim as well. In his dying dream (and the third surreal bit) he is revealed to be no more than a sorry, mangy street mongrel.

Cult Movie author Danny Peary indicated that "we expect a traditional happy ending" and coincidentally an alternate ending (found on the 'Coleccion Mexico En Pantalla' DVD, but also on YouTube, see below,) has a more conventional end to the story: Pedro kills Jaibo in the hayloft, takes the fifty pesos and returns them to the correctional facility, but one would think that Buñuel would have preferred the tragic, uncompromising ending.
We were shocked by the cruelty displayed by Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead (1968) when they unexpectedly killed their heroes and disposed of their bodies in a most unceremonious manner, but Buñuel led the way at least a decade before.

One of the Buñuel masterpieces and a cult classic.