bennyraldak This truly is a masterpiece, lost in the wind of obscurity. As a big Luis Bunuel fan I've seen almost all of his films - that is, except the ones you just can't seem to find anywhere anymore. This is one of those, and I finally found it. What a great and powerful picture. This is Bunuel's second and last film in English; an American/Mexican production mostly known as "The Young One".The entire film takes place on an almost deserted island; a place of solitude that represents the deep south of America. A game warden named 'Miller' lives on this island with the teenage daughter of his recently departed partner, a pretty girl named 'Evalyne'. Slowly 'Miller' is starting to notice that young 'Evalyn' is not a child anymore, at least in his mind. He finds himself very much attracted to her, and starts to 'act out' his forbidden but true desires. The plot thickens when a black man - on the run for being accused of raping an older white woman - enters the world of 'Miller' and 'Evalyn'. The old game warden turns out to be a racist, and wants to kill 'Traver', the black man. However, with young and innocent 'Evalyn' in the centre of the situation things make a different turn, and 'Traver' starts to work for 'Miller', even if he might still be a racist at heart. Then the plot thickens even more when a preacher and another racist are joining in. The preacher finds out there's sexual sin going on between 'Miller' and the young innocent, and he decides to baptize her and confront 'Miller' with his sins. Eventually he shows 'Miller' a way to redeem himself, by 'saving' the girl and the black man.This film is as pure and human as they come. It takes us on a journey to a place where we are confronted with themes like sin; sexual sin, ethnic sin, and existential sin... religion, guilt, mercy, and redemption. In short, all the famous Bunuel obsessions. Yet, this is definitely not an average Bunuel piece. It's very realistic, pure and extremely human. No impressive surrealistic cinematic tricks here. A straight up story about the demons of everyday humanity in modern times. And, I might add... one year prior to Kubrick's "Lolita", which of course has obvious parallels.A forgotten masterpiece that's finally found and available again. A cinefile's dream.

zetes Buñuel's second and final English language film (his first being Robinson Crusoe in 1954) is a racial issues movie, albeit quite a bit more complex than your average Stanley Kramer type of stuff. Traver (Bernie Hamilton), running from a false rape accusation, lands his boat on an island somewhere off the coast of a Southern state. That island is inhabited by only two people, although a third has only recently passed away. Evalyn (Key Meersman) is an uneducated teenager. Her grandfather is the recently deceased. Her grandfather's partner (they cultivate honey on the island) is Miller (Zachary Scott, the star of Jean Renoir's The Southerner). Miller, an older man, has designs on young Evalyn. He is also a vile racist, and delights in treating Traver cruelly. The film is very good in most regards. The script is fine, the performances (save that of Claudio Brook, a Mexican actor who delivers his English lines very awkwardly; either that, or they were dubbed badly by someone else) are wonderful. My only complaint is that the movie's denouement is a little weak. It's a gripping picture most of the way through, and it's a tad disappointing that it doesn't build to all that much. Still, a very good and underrated flick. Please note that Lionsgate's new Buñuel box set, which also includes Gran Casino, his first Mexican film, has the two films mislabeled. I popped in Gran Casino, only to get The Young One. I've confirmed that disc labeled The Young One does have Gran Casino on it. So if you want one from Netflix and not the other, keep this in mind.

Aw-komon Some of the above comments have mentioned pedophilia in connection with this film. An important distinction has to be made here to prevent corruption of language. What the Miller character (Zachary Scott) does is 'take advantage of an innocent' from his position of strength as an older man, but that is not the same thing as pedophilia at all. The girl in question is 13 years old and sexually mature (an age at which it was FULLY LEGAL to get married in some southern states, Jerry Lee Lewis anyone?). This would make sexual relations between her and a younger man closer to her age fully legal and between her and the older man STATUTORY RAPE only if the laws in that state said so. It is WRONG, in the sense that the girl is in a weak position and gets taken advantage of. But that could happen at any age and age interval per se can never be the only measure of who took advantage of who (look at all the women married to men 20 to 30 years their senior), although it is a pretty safe bet. In fact towards the end of the movie, one of the likely resolutions suggested by Miller to the priest as a way to redeem himself is "what would happen if I married her?" And when Miller lets Bernie Hamilton leave the island he is doing this to redeem himself in his own eyes and possibly marry the 13 year old girl later!That said, the main character is not the black fugitive (Bernie Hamilton) but the young girl (Kay Meersman, a Liv Tyler lookalike in an amazing performance). She has lived on a remote island for most of her life and knows very little about the racist realities of the American South (or anything else.) She is confronted with it head on, when a black clarinet-player fugitive named Travers, unjustly accused of raping a white woman escapes to her island to hide from a lynch mob. She becomes friendly with him and likes him as a person and can't understand the irrational animosity Miller (her temporary 'protector' whom she hates and who sleeps with her against her will)has for this man.All this creates a whole bunch of complex tensions that Bunuel deals with in the most masterful way possible. You really believe in all these characters, they are multi-dimensional and historically and psychologically valid. Bunuel has been called cynical and cruel. That may be true but nevertheless quite a few of his films remain consummate works of art because they live up to Pascal's idea of showing man's 'greatness within wretchedness.' This is one of them. 'The Young One' is a MUST SEE film, if there ever was one. It makes all other films about racism and the corruption of innocence look like amateur hour.

mgmax To viewers in 1960 this mostly seemed a rather turgid and unappealing tale of a bigot's reform, compromised by its trashy atmosphere. The key to the film, I believe, is Bunuel's admiration for the writing of the Marquis de Sade. The Zachary Scott character has a whole host of unexamined prejudices, not merely a racial one-- and when that one tumbles, his mind is liberated in all directions. The fact that this includes being "freed" from conventional sexual morality is the Sadean aspect of it-- as in A Clockwork Orange (but no other film that I can think of besides these two), true freedom is by no means an entirely positive or benevolent thing.