The Young One

Not one of Buñuel's more celebrated films, The Young One may be relatively crude in its production values and acting, but it is nevertheless thematically complex. A black jazz musician (Hamilton), escaping a wrongful rape charge, lands up on an island inhabited only by a gamekeeper (Scott) and his teenage ward (Meersman), an unspoilt nymphet. The gamekeeper's racial prejudice bursts forth, though it is he who eventually deflowers the consenting innocent. Buñuel has made of his potentially exploitative material an amoral parable, outlining the ways 'civilisation' can prove as harmful or as beneficial as untamed nature.