Youth of the Beast
Alternate title(s): Wild Youth
Foreign Title: Yaju no seishun
Date: January 01, 1963 to February 01, 1964
Dates Note: 1963
Country of Origin:
Japan
Place of Origin: Japan
Languages:
Japanese
Color: Color
Silent: No
Based On:
Additional Info:
Curator Notes
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
The Films of Seijun SuzukiDescription:
Suzuki himself claims that 1963 was the year when he truly came into his own, and Youth of the Beast is one of his breakthroughs. In his second collaboration with the director, Jo Shishido rampages through the movie, playing a disgraced ex-cop pitting two yakuza gangs against each other to avenge the death of a fellow officer. As the double- and triple-crosses mount, Suzuki fills the frame with lurid colors, striking compositions, and boldly theatrical effects that signal a director breaking away from genre material to forge a pulp art form all his own.
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Suzuki Returns!Description:
Following the discovery of two corpses-a dead cop and his equally dead mistress-a new yakuza in town (Jo Shishido) begins his rise to power, using the Takeshita School of Knitting as a cover. This was Suzuki's breakthrough film, as aggressively stylistic as they come, from the pink limo parked under matching pink cherry blossoms, to the incongruous sandstorm. Even Jo Shishido's chipmunk cheeks are an element of style (what is he hiding in there?). "However much they may pay lip service to the code of honor, Suzuki's gangsters become comic (no matter how violent) as the conventions of the genre are pushed to the point where they reveal their hollow artificiality. Sarcastically but with a straight face, he shows that a yakuza in films is only a romanticized version of an already idealized image of the samurai...."
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