The Young One

The Young One (released as White Trash in the United States and Island of Shame in the United Kingdom) is a 1960 English-language Mexican drama film directed and co-written by Luis Buñuel, and starring Zachary Scott, Bernie Hamilton, Key Meersman, Crahan Denton and Claudio Brook. "Inspired by" the story "Travelin' Man" by Peter Matthiessen, the film deals with issues such as racism and statutory rape by depicting the interactions between two men and a teenage girl on a private island game preserve. It was Buñuel's second (and last) film in English, following Robinson Crusoe (1954); both were co-written by Hugo Butler (under the pseudonym H. B. Addis) and produced by George Pepper (as George P. Werker), Americans who had moved to Mexico after being blacklisted in Hollywood. The Young One was screened in competition at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and has received highly positive reviews since its release. Plot When a white woman accuses him of raping her, Traver, a black clarinetist in a touring jazz band, steals a small boat to escape a lynch mob. He travels until the outboard motor runs out of gas, at which point he paddles to an island off the Carolina coast that is a private game preserve. It is not hunting season, so the island's only inhabitants are the caretakers Miller and Pee-Wee and Pee-Wee's teenage granddaughter Evalyn. Pee-Wee dies the same morning Traver comes to the island. Miller says he did not approve of how the elderly drunkard was raising Evvie, and he intends to put her in the care of the church and send her to the mainland so she can attend school. After he has her clean herself up and brush her wild hair, however, he notices she is growing up and comes on to her. Evvie escapes Miller's cabin and locks herself in hers with Pee-Wee's corpse.