Nagisa Oshima's groundbreaking film opens with young, attractive Mako and her friend hitching a ride from an old man. After her friend leaves, the man tries to rape her, and she is saved only by the handsome Kiyoshi. Later, against the background of the tumultuous 1960 U.S./Japan Security Treaty demonstrations, Kiyoshi and Mako walk along a grungy seaside lumberyard while talking about sex. He attempts to kiss her, she slaps him, and he throws her in the water. She cries out that she can't swim. When she continues to refuse his advances, he steps on her fingers as she clings to a log. Kiyoshi then saves Mako from a trio of seedy pimps looking to impress her into working for them, but after rescuing her, he forces himself on her again. With this unlikely beginning, Kiyoshi and Mako form a passionate though doomed romance. Soon she stops going to school and moves into his flea-ridden dive of an apartment. Utterly disillusioned with all trappings of societal convention, the two get cash by blackmailing businessmen and by shaking down Kiyoshi's middle-aged sugarmama. Tension with this Bonnie and Clyde duo builds after Mako has an abortion in a run down clinic, performed by an alcoholic doctor. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
With the savage fury of a cry from hell, this landmark Japanese teen drama is a brutal, scathing attack on the moral and cultural vacuity of Japan's newfound affluence after World War II. Cruel Story of Youth has widely been compared to Rebel Without a Cause; like Nicholas Ray's film, it features disillusioned teens rebelling against everything without really understanding why. Unlike its American counterpart, Cruel Story of Youth is unrelentingly dark and gritty, depicting mindless or coerced sex and brutal violence in a chillingly offhand manner. Made at a time when the restrained sentimentality of Yasujiro Ozu or existential humanism of Akira Kurosawa were the norm, this film shocks because of the social taboos it transgresses and the amount of venom it directs towards Japanese society. In style and politics, it bears a strong resemblance to Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave masterpiece Breathless, released a year earlier. Both films gleefully subverted well-worn genres for their own political and aesthetic ends; and both employed a fresh, defiant style based on the hand-held camera. The success of Cruel Story of Youth ushered in the Japanese New Wave and established Nagisa Oshima as one of Japan's most prominent and daring directors. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Cast
Yasuke Kawazu - Kiyoshi Fujii
Miyuki Kuwano - Mako Shinjo
Yoshiko Kuga - Yuki, Makoto's elder
Fumio Watanabe - Akimoto
Shinji Tanaka - Yoshimi Ito, student
Shinjiro Matsuzaki - Terada; Toshiko Kobayashi - Teruko Shimonishi; Jun Hamamura - Masahiro Shinjo; Shinko Ujiie - Masae Sakaguchi; Aki Morishima - Yoko Ishikawa; Yuki Tominaga - Toshiko Nishioka; Asao Sano - Inspector; Kan Nihon-yanagi; Kei Sato - Akira Matsuko
Credit
Koji Uno - Art Director, Toshiro Ishido - First Assistant Director, Nagisa Oshima - Director, Keiichi Uraoka - Editor, Riichiro Manabe - Composer (Music Score), Ko Kawamata - Cinematographer, Tomio Ikeda - Producer, Nagisa Oshima - Screenwriter
Cruel Story of Youth(青春残酷物語,Seishun Zankoku Monogatari?) (1960), was the second film directed by Nagisa Oshima.
Oshima, who was only 28 at the time, made extensive use of hand-held cameras and location shooting, and the results drew comparisons to the French nouvelle vague filmmakers emerging at around the same time; the film became one of the primary films in the Nuberu bagu.
The use of adolescent criminals as protagonists generated controversy at the time, though the film was also a commercial success, which helped to pave the way for the emergence of a young and adventurous generation of new Japanese filmmakers: in short order, Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, Yasuzo Masumura, Susumu Hani, Hiroshi Teshigahara and others began to attract international attention. In this film, Oshima was already beginning to explore the themes he would soon become celebrated for: a focus on youth and on 'outsiders', and critical deconstructions of more stereotypical imagery in Japanese cinema.
Cruel Story of Youth was the first of three films Oshima completed in 1960; it was followed by The Sun's Burial and Night and Fog in Japan.
Sources
Donald Richie. 100 Years Of Japanese Cinema, 2003, Kodansha.
Joan Mellen. The Waves At Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema, 1975, Pantheon.
Tadao Sato. Currents In Japanese Cinema, 1982, Kodansha.
