Alternate Ending
In the year 2002, it was announced that an alternate ending for Los Olvidados (labeled "the happy ending") was discovered at the Film Warehouse of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and it would be restored digitally in order to show it to the public. On July 8, 2005, it was re-screened with the alternate ending on a few selected venues and included in subsequent DVD releases .
At the International Cinematographic Festival in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, on February 3, 2011, the last surviving member of the cast, Alfonso Mejia (Pedro), introduced the alternative ending to the film.
According to Mejia, Buñuel was "pressured by the censorship in México, and urged to film an alternative ending, a conventional ending, to maintain the image of a progressive Mexico, where no one was poor or illiterate" (you can view the interview here).
The alternative ending begins with El Jaibo and Pedro fighting on an abandoned warehouse. Pedro pushes El Jaibo from the roof, where he falls to his death. Pedro frisks the body for the money El Jaibo stole from him (in contrast to the original ending, where Pedro is murdered by El Jaibo). Pedro returns to the farm school with the money that the principal entrusted to him.
Read more about this topic: Los Olvidados
Famous quotes containing the word alternate:
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“Germany is a queer country: one can’t regard it dispassionately. I alternate between hating it thoroughly, stick, stock and stone, and yearning over it fit to break my heart. I can’t help feeling it a young and adorable country—adolescent—with the faults of adolescence.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)