Humaira Grant
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
MartinHafer
This is a very daring film from famed director Luis Buñuel. While he's famous for the films he made in Mexico and France, this is an American-made film featuring American actors. Here he takes on two hot topics for 1960--racism and pedophilia! While some films from Hollywood were tackling racism, most were very sanitized and featured black actors who were non-threatening--very well-spoken and easy to like. Here, however, the black man is darn angry--something you just didn't see back in films in 1960. As far as pedophilia goes, you never really heard it discussed in films--and the movie was far ahead of its time.The film begins with a black guy (Bernie Hamilton) washing up on the shore of an island in the American Southeast. Apparently he'd been accused of raping a white woman and had escaped on the small boat to avoid a lynch mob. It turns out the island is a private hunting preserve and the white trash game warden (Zachary Scott) is off the island on business. The only other resident is a young girl (about age 12) whose grandfather (and only guardian) just died--who exactly the old man was and how they came to be there is never discussed but you know that the girl has never been off the island and is ignorant of the world. She finds the man and helps him--giving him food and treating him with respect--presumably because she never learned to hate black people.When Scott returns, he tries to kill Hamilton--and it's not even because of the rumor that he raped a woman. He thinks Hamilton has stolen some items...plus in Scott's mind, it's okay just to shoot any old trespasser! But, it turns out Scott is much worse than this--as he soon begins molesting the girl. As for her, she's so sheltered and backward she doesn't quite understand what's happening.There is a lot more that happens after this--most of which is excellent and very compelling. The only negative is the character of the preacher, as Buñuel had a rather pathological hatred of religion. Even though this minister is probably the most likable of any holy man in a Luis Buñuel film, he is totally square and rigid in his thinking--moralistic and a bit dumb. But, he still is basically a very good man (a rarity in these films). His character was simply too one-dimensional--as no preacher is THAT oblivious! Yes, we know the director hated priests and the like, but this did appear to hinder the film's believability--which is a shame, as it's a darn fine film and very, very, very realistic otherwise. And, because it is so well-made and daring, I still strongly recommend you see it, as it's not like anything being made in this country at the time. While some felt this was a lesser film by the director, I actually think it's among his most powerful and best movies. I loved the raw language (back in 1960 and even today it's really tough stuff) and parallel about the white man who could easily excuse pedophilia but couldn't wait to kill the black man!! Wow...gritty.
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.
