Buñuel's lucid portrait of the children of Mexico's urban slums still has the power to shock with its harsh realism and passionate surrealism. Such images as a gang of youths tipping a legless beggar out of his cart or tormenting a blind man recall the early scenes of L'Age D'Or, but, as Buñuel ironically notes, “There is nothing imagined in this film; it is all merely true.” With love but without pity, Buñuel unfolds the story of a gang of kids who, left to their own devices, become delinquents as a defense against poverty, lack of affection, the cruelty of police and pederasts on the city streets. In the characters of Jaibo, the gang leader, and Pedro, his naive victim, Buñuel makes a subtle distinction between corruption and delinquency. But, as the surrealist Ado Kyrou has pointed out, “there is no moralizing, as in American films of the same type; rather, the film testifies to the great distress of our times.” Los Olvidados won the prize for Best Director and Best Cinematographer at the Cannes festival in 1951, and was praised by filmmakers and film critics alike. The great French critic, Andre Bazin, called the film “a miracle... it is the same, the inimitable Buñuel, a message which remains faithful to L'Age D'Or and Las Hurdes, a film which lashes the mind like a red hot iron and leaves one's conscience no opportunity for rest.”