Page 256 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

in the film, is, by default, identified in the light of having seen that which has been observed of this
'land without bread'.
Los Olvidados 'corrects' this absence of civilisation but retains the closing sentiment - 'the solution
is left to the progressive forces of our time'. It opens, disconcertingly, with shots of cities (New Yotk,
Paris, London, Mexico) that, although they register as characteristically different are, we are informed,
all characterised by the presence of 'unwanted, hungry, uneducated children ... the criminals of the
future'. From this vantage point, the city becomes generic - the locus of civilisation rather than a
specific urban area. And so now the ills of the 'edge of Europe' are positioned within the city (that
is, within the locus of an advanced Western 'centre') in a way that would be entirely familiar to
contemporary critics of globalisation. Although the structure suggests a looking-on-into this area (as
does the deceptively investigative tone of the voice-over, employed to 'justify' the preoccupations of
the film, another exploitational tic), the teverse is achieved.
You do not allow us a critical distance from the horrors that are shown - rather, you position us
squarely in front of them; for example, the final image of Jacobi's body rolling down into a rubbish
dump at the city limits. It is delivered with such nonchalance, divested of all possible thematic
meaning, that the viewer is forced to invest it with pathos (if of the left) or drama (if of the tight). In
this way, the perspective is now one of looking-at-from - an awareness of the position from which we
view the film (as experienced too, in a partisan way, in Las Hurdes). The net result is that you force
us into an atea whete, like the Blind Ma n of Los Olvidados, we are lost, disorientated and besieged
by events around us - events that suggest meanings that we can only guess at. This is why, since our
ideological framework is failing to provide interpretations for what is seen, the parade of problematic
images encountered from the perspective of 'looking-at-from' represents a ferocious assault on us.
In Ensayo de un crimen (The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, 1955) we are confronted with
the same conundrum, albeit slightly higher up the social ladder - this time we try desperately to
formulate an idea of the society, the type of civilisation, in which such acts can occur and do seem to
be sanctioned. Herein is the assault on the fantasmatic foundations of such societies.

THE UNACCEPTABLE IMAGE AS 'TRUTH'

I did not intend to wind up discussing the idea of'blindness'. It would be too easy to cite a smoking
starting pistol for such an endeavour in the slicing of the eye in Un Chien Andalou. And, moreover, my
point is that the viewer may feel blinded by your films but, paradoxically, only because you deny the
viewer the possibility of remaining within the true land of the blind: the ideological framework and
its fantasmatic foundation, those within the First World 'sphere', blind to the meaning of the social
ills that exist on the margins of their awareness, an awareness that itself is becoming eclipsed by the
'virtual'. And what is the virtual other than a 'real simulation', the fetishisation of the sublime which
overwhelms the empirical-phenomenological 'truth'? In the light of this, your method represents a
strong counter current.
I will reconsider this shortly, but first let me ask: what is the nature of the Bunuelian front
against the virtual? It is more than just a didactic catalogue of 'social ills'. The waves of images that
burn into the mind in the first third of Los Olvidados make for the lineaments of a nightmare - not

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