The Young One (1960)

Wonderful Movie

hyped garbage

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

I just got to see this film a few days ago and it is without a doubt a forgotten classic that like "The Defiant Ones" which preceded it and "To Kill A Mockingbird" which followed it deals with racism in the Jim Crow South.The eponymous young one is Evvie (Key Meersman) a teenage girl who's lived a quiet, isolated life on a coastal island with her grandfather. When the grandfather passes away she temporarily enters the custody of a cruel, bigoted caretaker named Miller (Zachary Scott) who is soon making advances towards her. Things get more complicated when an African American clarinet player named Traver (Bernie Hamilton) enters the picture fleeing a police manhunt that ensues when he's accused of raping a white woman. The screenplay by Hugo Butler, Luis Bunuel and Peter Matthiessen eschews stereotypes and the usual melodramatic clichés in favor of real, 3-dimensional characterizations and authentic human drama. Of course, I was familiar with Zachary Scott from earlier films where he famously played sophisticated heels. Here Scott does an excellent job with the difficult task of putting a human face on a despicable character. Likewise Bernie Hamilton, who's best known for a recurring role on the TV series Starsky and Hutch, is pitch-perfect as a musician who understands the forces arrayed against him but refuses to be a victim. I can't find much information about Key Meersman and it appears she only made a couple of films which is too bad because she was a gifted young actress. "The Young One" was a major work by a great director which sadly didn't get the respect it deserved from the establishment in 1960.

A black jazz musician on the run from a lynch mob stumbles across the game warder of a private island and the young, innocent girl the warder guards over. Sweet and precocious Evy is almost completely unaware of the world outside her isolated island and unable to defend against the advances of her guardian, while also not comprehending the nature of the problem with the musician's arrival.Bunuel's more well-known films are very impressive, but some of his lesser-known films aren't given enough attention for what they are. "La Joven" is a parable of innocence brought suddenly up against racism, exploitation, and sex, and as a whole is a very morally ambiguous film. Ultimately, the question must be asked: is one man's life being paid for by the freedom of a young girl, or will she choose a different, completely unfamiliar life full of its own trials? Those are the questions left with the audience by the movie's conclusion.Bunuel's mastery is reinforced by how well he is able to get into the regional dialect, settings, and character of this film. Here is a director who has shot movies from all over the world and managed to give a rather distinctive feel for each of the locations they've been made in.--PolarisDiB

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.

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.