Los Olvidados is a story of a boy, Pedro, who goes through life dealing different situations often difficult that were mainly caused by the villain of the movie, Jaibu, who always gets him into troubles. The film portrays the lower class people of the Mexican population, who are struggling to support themselves and their families. All the characters in this movie are seen as corrupt and have been shown as degraded images. On the other hand, the lower class people in Maria Candelaria are portrayed as civilized people. The characters are not shown as demeaning as in Los Olvidados. The main character, Maria Candelaria, is a shown as a very respectful person who is not given respect by her community due to her mother being a prostitute.
According to Acevedo-Munoz article, the movie Los Olvidados was viewed as an insult to Mexican sensibilities and to the Mexican nation. The movie is an urban drama based on the adventures and hardships of a young boy, Pedro, who learns a life-lesson on self-preservation. He meets with different characters through the movie but none of them help him accomplish anything. Instead they mistreat him, lie to him, take advantage of him, and get him in more trouble. An attempt to helping him in the end led to his death. Buneal clearly states that the movie is based on real-life events implying that it is a documentary so that the solution to the problems presented in this movie are left for the society to decide upon. Buneal through field research made sure that they portrayed the characters accordingly to the real physical depiction of the environment. He focused on the details like the interior of shacks and shanties, existence of animals, and the number of people in each houses. The movie got a lot of criticisms by the people who thought that that Los olvidados portrayed a viciously negative, false, and "dirty" image of Mexico. Even the film's producer was scared that people would not notice the talent in the film but focus on the filth in the movie. (Acevedo-Munoz).
The movie portrayed the slums of Mexico showing a degrading image of the people living in Mexico. The film mainly focused on the poor people living in the community. It is "a social critique, as an indictment of its contemporary urban society through its depiction of over-crowded slum shanties, domestic abuse, incest, child abuse, the arbitrary nature of both crime and punishment, poverty, and the ineptness of public social services" (Acevedo-Munoz, p. 9). The movie showed poor children doing drugs and getting involved in the activities like stealing and getting into fights with each other. Basically, the movie shows the corruption in the slums of Mexico. Due to poverty, the children get into activities that can help them succeed in life. Children presented in this movie are shown to be influenced by corruption really easily. For instance, in the beginning of the movie we see Jaibu, who ran out of the reform school. He meets with the children and asks them to come steal with him. They immediately agree and decide upon stealing from a blind man. Later when he could not steal from the blind man, he goes after him and harrass that man as a revenge for injuring the other kid. Throughout the movie we see Jaibu having a influence on Pedro's mother too. Pedro's mother already does not like Pedro as he does not contribute to the family but later she believes Jaibu over Pedro's truth when Jaibu stole the silver knife. The characters in the film, Los Olvidados, represent the poorest of any society in situations that bring out only the worst in them: violence, murder, decrepit, filthy settings, over-crowding, lying, cheating, stealing, sickness, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, incest, abandonment, hopelessness (Acevedo-Munoz, p. 11). We also see that the clothing of the characters in the movie are worn out and looks dirty.
Maria Candelaria, on the other hand, shows the people in a very different view. We see a very civilized and organized community unlike in Los Olvidados. The community here is a family community who thinks very highly of themselves. They are not corrupted. Even though we see an owner who is trying to make life for Maria Candelaria difficult because she would not marry him. We do not see much influence of his on other people. We see the priest from the church as a supporting character for Maria Candelaria. There are characters that very against Maria Candelaria like the girl who liked guy supporting Maria and the owner. However, they could not influence the community as much. The community did not give the respect she deserve due to Maria's mother being a prostitute, however, the villains did not made much influence on their thinking like the priest did. Especially when everyone accepted Maria at the church when the priest explained to the community.
The film, Los Olvidados, portrayed no noble Indian souls except the naïve country boy, 'El Ojitos' who is the only one wearing a poncho and a sombrero, true makers of folkloric Mexico. The film presented no Mexican beauty. It showed no national landmarks in the background, neither gentle revolutionary generals nor faithful soldaderas. We only see a mean blind man who misses the times of Don Porfirio. Through the movie we see a building under construction and in the end we see the hills of a garbage dump where Pedro's dead body was thrown. There are no traditional family values in the movie among the characters (Acevedo-Munoz). However, in Maria Candelaria we see a lot of Mexican beauty. We see a lot of landscape showing the real beauty of Mexico. We see family melodramas and an attachment to the god from Maria Candelaria. We see her faith in the god at the beginning and then her hurtful conversation with god when the man who she was supposed to get married to was taken to the jail.
Los olvidados addresses the defining problem of the system while showing the slow transition to modernity after the revolution. Emilio Fernández presented a sort of romantic, innocent resistance to Mexico's process of modernization while Buneal in Los olvidados presents Mexico in a less melodramatic and more realistic fashion. Buñuel dramatizes that modernization lessens the morals and presented hopelessness and a completely amoral existence in Los olvidados due to modernization. Los olvidados is an amoral tale where we see no god, nation, or home emotions attached to the characters. It represents a draft or a sketch of Mexico City in the face of modernization, unlike Fernandez;s classic "Indianist" movies. (Acevedo-Munoz). Buñuel's arrival in Mexico in the "late golden age", is the beginning of the decline of the romantic aestheticism of Emilio Fernández and the rise of the psychoanalytic pessimism of Octavio Paz (Acevedo-Munoz, p. 22).
