The Return of Los Golfos ("The Delinquents"): Carlos Saura's Searing 1959 Neorealist Debut

LOS GOLFOS / The Delinquents 

(Carlos Saura, Spain, 1959, 84 minutes) 

Los Golfos is one of the most uncompromising films I've ever seen about the trap of poverty. 

Carlos Saura, in his feature-film debut, doesn't even make his protagonists especially likeable, though they're always engaging. He simply shows them building to a plan that could set them on the path to prosperity–or leave them with nothing. There's no middle ground; it's either success or failure. 

Granted, the Spanish title translates as The Delinquents or The Hooligans, but Saura, who began as a director of documentary shorts, isn't being strictly metaphorical, and nor does his film, which he shot on location in Madrid's less photogenic neighborhoods, qualify as exploitation fare. It falls squarely in the neorealist camp, something I wouldn't say about his more stylized flamenco films, like 1983's Oscar-nominated musical Carmen. 

And unlike the American B-movies of the time, these guys aren't tricked out in leather to race around on motorcycles. They're just trying to get by. 

It's always a risk to hitch your wagon to a star, but it's the best option around, so Juan (Óscar Cruz) has been training to become a matador, and his friends will do anything to help him out. Juan is taking a risk, too–the biggest, really–because not everyone is cut out to be a matador. He's also motivated by a porter job that has him lugging heavy baskets of produce. 

For what it's worth, Juan has no reservations about plunging banderillas (long pointed sticks) into bulls' backs. What might seem like animal cruelty to an outsider–and I'm not saying that it isn't–is par for the course for the aspiring matador, who doesn't come across as much of a deep thinker. 

For anyone who struggled with Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, which centers on an abused donkey, or Albert Serra's bullfighting documentary Afternoons of Solitude, which features several abused bulls, Los Golfos could prove a tough sit, though Saura mostly focuses on life outside the ring. 

Right: Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey in Afternoons of Solitude

At first, I assumed the quintet was acting primarily out of loyalty and friendship, but it's only toward the end that it becomes clear they're looking to become part of a matador's entourage, which doesn't exclude loyalty and friendship by any means, but Juan is as much a potential meal ticket as a friend. 

Though the film has abundant Spanish flavor--plaintive flamenco guitar, heartrending folk singing--the narrative could have just as easily centered on a basketball player in Harlem, a football player in South Central, or any number of other athlete-in-the-city combinations. Some professional players are more than happy to share their largesse with the hometown crew.

The film begins as one of the youths robs a blind merchant, the first sign that they aren't stealing from those who can take a hit, but from those who need the money as much as they do. If anything, their victims come across as more sympathetic, but that's Saura's point: they're victims, too. Victims of a system that benefits from their exploitation–little surprise that the film was censored in Spain, even after a well received premiere at Cannes. 

Later, they steal parts from trucks and motorcycles to sell for cash, and they rob a man who's simply going home from work. For what it's worth, they aren't armed, they don't kill anyone, and they don't inflict any permanent injuries, but they're as forceful and intimidating as necessary. 

They also have a moll in Juan's self-possessed girlfriend, Visi (María Mayer), who assists with some of their schemes, like the time she lets a patron cozy up to her at a bar while Ramón (Luis Marín, a standout among the mostly non-professional cast) attempts to lift an unattended wallet. As Juan tells Visi after a night of romance–a sequence censored in Spain since they're pictured in bed–"If I'm lucky and I win, I'll get you out of this place." 

Marín also appears in the terrific 1959 short, La Tarde del Domingo, a damning portrait of a family of oppressors from the perspective of their put-upon maid (Isana Medel); it's included with the new Radiance release.

To Saura's credit, there are no weak links in the cast. Because he keeps exposition to a minimum, it took me a while to sort everyone out, but that has nothing to do with the performances. The filmmaker found young men with distinctive features and personas, who work well together, though most--Marín aside--would leave acting behind afterward. 

The risks intensify when Juan meets with promoter Don Félix (Arturo Ors) to inform him he's ready for competition. Don is happy to oblige, but only if he pays 20,000 pesetas upfront. I'm not sure if he's taking advantage of Juan's inexperience or if it's pay-to-play for all first-timers, but Juan and his friends decide it's worth the price to send him on his way to fame and fortune. 

Since petty crimes won't add up quickly enough, they plan one big score instead. Nothing works according to plan, but these delinquents are relentless, and they won't let anything stand in their way. Since Los Golfos is neorealism bordering on noir, they'll have more unpleasant surprises ahead. 

Saura ends on a note of cruel irony. That isn't to suggest that he's cruel, though you could see it that way, since the director created the pitiless scenario (he wrote the screenplay with director Mario Camus and journalist Daniel Sueiro). If anything, he had to tone down the politics, since the censors rejected the previous anti-fascist projects he had proposed.  

In Michael Eaude's Saura obituary for The Guardian, he states that "its implicit critique of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco meant that it was forbidden in Spain for another couple of years." Because the 1962 release was censored, it had to be pieced together for this 4K restoration, so it's fortunate the missing elements were accessible, thus restoring it to the version that netted a Palme d'Or nomination at 1960's Cannes Film Festival. 

In the history of Spanish cinema, Carlos Saura is often placed, chronologically, after Luis Buñuel–who also worked in France and Mexico–and before Pedro Almodóvar as the top three filmmakers. (Saura, who dedicated Peppermint Frappé to Buñuel, also considered him a friend.) 

The Criterion Collection has reissued five of his features, including 1976's stunning Cría Cuervos… with his one-time companion Geraldine Chaplin; four of those films are available exclusively as part of box sets, while 13 are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. 

So, he's hardly an unknown quantity, and it isn't hard to see many--though not all--of his films. Nonetheless, I hadn't heard of Los Golfos until Radiance reissued it last fall, and I'm not sure why, but I think it's a combination of a troubled afterlife and because it doesn't quite fit with the rest of his 44 non-fiction and narrative features, even though he was a fairly restless talent with wide-ranging interests. 

It's a tough-minded picture fueled by fury that doesn't just speak to Spain in 1959, when it was made, but to any country in which young, working class people have few opportunities to better themselves–a situation hardly unknown in the United States, especially in its more impoverished regions. 

For my money, it bears comparison with José Antonio Nieves Conde's Surcos ("Furrows"), Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados ("The Forgotten Ones"), and Fellini's semiautobiographical I Vitelloni ("The Layabouts"), and deserves nearly as much acclaim as those celebrated early-career films. 

Los Golfos is out now on Blu-ray with author and curator interviews, two short films (including 1955's La Llamada), a handsome booklet featuring an excellent essay, "And the World Goes Round," from British critic Mar Diestro-Dópido, and other contextual extras. Another winner from Radiance Films (available in the US via MVD). Images from Slant Magazine, Pere Portabella (Óscar Cruz), Grasshopper Films / The New York Times (Andrés Roca Rey), Blu-ray.com (Luis Marín), the IMDb (Cruz with María Mayer and Arturo Ors), and Gianni Ferrari / Getty Images / Le Monde (Carlos Saura in 1966).