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| Director Nagisa Ōshima |
CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (Seishun zankoku monogatari) B+ aka: Naked Youth Japan (96 mi) 1960 ‘Scope d: Nagisa Ōshima
A sexual relationship with another brings about a connection with all humanity: by embracing one person, you are able to embrace all humanity. —Nagisa Ōshima
Inspired by the French New Wave, Ōshima was a motivating voice who helped usher in a Japanese New Wave that expressed a disillusionment and cynicism of postwar Japanese youth, which was a sharp break from the films of Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, and Yasujirō Ozu, whose cinematic aesthetic evoked older Japanese traditions. Having come from an aristocratic family, supposedly a descendent from a privileged Samurai family, whose father was a government official who kept a large library, but died when he was only 6-years old, so common among Japanese families whose fathers were lost in the Pacific War, the 22-year old Ōshima quit law school yet aced the Shōchiko studios entrance exam and served a five-year apprentice while seething at the dullness and conservatism of the studio’s films, as did the other directors in Japan’s New Wave, including Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda, and Shōhei Imamura, all forced to adapt to confining rules. He left Shōchiku in 1961 in protest over the shelving of his politically charged NIGHT AND FOG IN JAPAN (1960), which was pulled from theaters just three days after its release when Japan’s Socialist Party leader, Inejirō Asanuma, was assassinated on live TV in a brutal stabbing during a nationally televised political debate by a right-wing nationalist, with Ōshima forming his own production company Sozosha later that same year. While his first film, STREET OF LOVE OF HOPE (1959), a bleak melodrama about class conflict, was a commercial failure, only released in a few small theaters, this second film in his Trilogy of Youth (followed by THE SUN’S BURIAL later that same year) is a dark, shocking, and unpleasant crime film about hedonistic teens that proved to be enormously popular with young filmgoers, viewed at the time as scandalous, capturing the height of political turmoil and massive protests against the 1960 renewal of the highly contentious US-Japan Security Treaty of 1951 that allowed U.S. troops to remain in Japan. The director, along with much of Japan, was profoundly shaken by Japan’s refusal and/or inability to set its own course after the ending of the American occupation, establishing Ōshima as a leading figure in the generation of young filmmakers who rebelled against Japanese cinema’s status quo. Refusing to appeal to the collective consciousness of the audience, or echo established forms in any way, the auteur Ōshima followed the example of Jean-Luc Godard with an insistence upon bringing a subjective individuality to his filmmaking, making shocking, disruptive films that sent a new message to viewers, focusing on youth crime, abusive relationships, and the struggles of ordinary people, with no scenes involving actors sitting on tatami mats, while businessmen make frequent use of Western style “love hotels” that offer rooms by the hour, literally forcing the audience to break with bonds of tradition.
Following the military defeat of Japan in WWII, the surrender of the Emperor meant the defeat of the values he represented, throwing the nation into a state of ideological confusion. The devastation inflicted on many Japanese cities and the massive loss of life led to an equally devastating moral aftermath of the war with the American occupation, which led to sweeping democratic reforms, yet were perceived as empty promises of a new democratic government, as the exoneration of Emperor Hirohito from wartime responsibility and the release of many war criminals back into society left the people of Japan to bear the burden of guilt and responsibility for Japan’s loss, leaving society in a broken state of open despair. Parents who were affected by the loss felt a sense of powerless resignation, aligning themselves with the postwar capitalistic boom and the recovery of the Japanese economy in the 50’s, yet their children would eventually fight the right wing government in the 60’s and the shallow offerings that materialism could bring. Like the young guns from Cahiers du Cinéma, Ōshima was also a film critic turned director, adopting the cinematic aesthetics of the French New Wave’s use of handheld cameras and real-life locations, predominately shooting outdoors on this film, while also aligned with the British Angry young men of the 50’s and 60’s (the film was banned in Great Britain, released in a cut version in 1976, finally released uncut in 2008), Ōshima’s film introduced a transgressive element into Japanese cinema that led to more extreme levels of violence and sex in Japanese cinema. While Ōshima’s most famous film is his sado-masochistic arthouse movie IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), which drew the wrath of Japanese censorship, causing an international crisis with its daringly provocative sexuality, this is a jarring, unsentimentalized story about the aimless indifference of the rebellious next generation, where the lessons learned from the war, the sacrifices and hard, self-imposed discipline in the reconstruction era of the 50’s are distant memories in the forming of a New Japan. Ōshima’s film is a blistering social critique of postwar Japan, set against a backdrop of American materialism, leaving behind a moral void, not only rejecting the new militarism on the right but also the failure of the left to offer a viable alternative to the status quo, introducing original newsreel footage of the 1960 student riots in Seoul, South Korea which deposed President Syngman Rhee from power, and also the May Day demonstration in Tokyo, acknowledging contemporary events of the moment, yet his protagonists are apolitical, where this might be called the Japanese version of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), only one striking difference is the use of unsympathetic lead characters. An ode to lost youth, where sex and violence are viewed as rebellious expressions of freedom, like a chain link to the past where you can’t break free, doomed to repeat the same mistakes, as the winds of Japanese liberal social change of the 50’s resembles that same anti-establishment movement during the 60’s in America, with an idealized future that never seems to come. Many of the characters appear to be trapped within an existential crisis and are seen desperately searching for meaning in their lives, with one of the protagonists bleakly asserting, “We have no dreams, so we can’t see them destroyed.”
Miyuki Kuwano is Mako, an attractive young teenage girl wearing stylish Western clothes who carelessly hitches rides with older men just for the provocative thrill of it, as automobiles are more fun than trains. But when one middle-aged man sexually assaults her on the street, she is rescued by another stranger, Kiyoshi (Yūsuke Kawazu), a skinny James Dean figure who intervenes and takes the man’s money, though sadly, after a night on the town, they run off to an industrial lumber yard the next day where he rapes her on a tied-together bundle of floating logs after nearly drowning her to guarantee compliance. After this manhandling, she improbably falls in love with the guy, who remains a brute, slapping her and throwing her around, treating her like a slab of meat. He’s a disillusioned college student who dropped out, with professors still teaching classes as if the last twenty years of Japanese history had not occurred, creating a cultural amnesia that these disillusioned youths found repugnant, quickly realizing social change was not going to happen. Initially he was part of the widespread opposition to the revision of the U.S.–Japan Alliance in 1960, viewed as a blatant act of American imperialism, which led to the massive Anpo protests, the largest popular protests in Japan’s history, but he defies student demonstrations as a waste of time and is instead a small-time thug, creating an extortion scam where Mako takes a drive with a middle-aged man while Kiyoshi follows on his motorbike, and when the guy inevitably makes his move on Mako, he’ll be there to pound his face in and steal his money, Cruel Story of Youth (4K restoration) - Japan Cuts 2015 YouTube (1:34). They attempt to create meaning in their lives by targeting those who represent what they lack—money. Afterwards they drive his stolen motorbike into the ocean and make love on a beach. This works fine until Mako gets sick and tired of being a bought and sold woman, where she’s being dangled like a piece of merchandise. The family reaction is interesting, as the older sister Yuki (Yoshiko Kuga), who was something of a rebellious child in her own right, part of the first wave of postwar student radicals taking part in the protests against the original 1951 Security Treaty, becoming quickly disillusioned, can’t understand why her own parents aren’t more demonstrative about Mako spending the night with a man, or neglecting her studies at high school, something they made a point of doing when she was growing up. Makoto’s father (Shinjo Masahiro) accepts the fact that times have changed and you can’t simply put your foot down and expect total compliance, as kids don’t listen anymore, declaring “Times were tough after the war, but we had a way of life. I could’ve lectured you that we were reborn a democratic nation, that responsibility went hand in hand with freedom. But today what can we say to this child? Nothing. I don’t want to tell her not to do this.” When the older sister tries to intervene, this only pushes Mako into Kiyoshi’s arms, as she moves in with him on the spot. While there is instant passion between the two, it’s directed inward so all they see is themselves, spending their time living in a dive, drinking in sleazy bars, and getting into fights with pimps who have their eye on the girl, seeing only dollar signs. Kiyoshi protects her, but rival gangsters continue to lurk in the shadows, keeping their leering eye on the girl. Meanwhile, Kiyoshi continues to get secret financial help from an older woman Teruko (Toshiko Kobayashi) who gives him money for sexual favors—another operator working behind the scenes.
In a nod to Westernized intervention, each of the bar scenes features raunchy jukebox music that alternates between bebop jazz and American rockabilly, a complete cultural break from anything used by earlier Japanese filmmakers, who emphasized more traditional Japanese sounds, yet in the same way there is a staggering cut from the lovers’ heated physical exchange to a churning industrial cement mixer, which is a defiant condemnation of the Ozu-style pillow shot and an adept metaphor for the distance between these doomed lovers and the new Japan being built for a burgeoning middle class that excludes them, exchanging one tired, old patriarchal system for another, disguised under the garb of American capitalism, represented by large American cars and the wads of cash the businessmen carry. Stylistically removed from conventional cinema, the radical use of Technicolor Cinemascope and a telephoto lens in cramped interior scenes further isolates the protagonists from their surroundings, creating a claustrophobic feeling of oppression, portraying the dark side of sexual norms, including exploitation, violence, and subjugation, marked by a theme of masochism found in later Ōshima films, which is especially prevalent in his most controversial film, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), forcing the audience to re-think the established concept of social reality by being forced to “re-see” it on the screen, actually heightening the emotional realism of the story. This dizzying juxtaposition of polar opposites is also reflected in the constantly changing moods between the young lovers, who are emblematic of postwar anxieties, generational malaise, and cultural changes in Japan, caught in a vicious web of violence and destruction, often compared to Godard’s young lovers in Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1959), though with a complete absence of romanticism, perhaps best represented by a heartfelt plea from Mako, asking “Why can’t you treat me better?” She may as well have been asking the same from her embattled nation. With constant turmoil and bottled-up emotions, this film makes clear just how impossible it was to be an independent-minded Japanese woman in the early 1960’s, reaching its lowest point when she announces her pregnancy and all he can think about is money for an abortion, failing to even consider the possibility of having a future together. Mako may want to love him, blind to all other possibilities, but it’s here she realizes his vulgar limitations. In one of the strangest scenes in the film emphasizing his crude ways, Ōshima shows him gulping down an entire apple in real time as he hovers over her still anaesthetized body after the operation, Cruel Story of Youth 1960 / Nagisa Oshima YouTube (1:31). But these two have no future together, have no real connection to anything at all. There’s a strange detachment to these characters all along, who are perceived as lives in free-fall, yet we’re as intrigued by their impulsive behavior as we are repulsed by their own crass indifference. Stuck in a cycle of regret and weary capitulation to their individual fates, Ōshima’s ultimate message is undoubtedly nihilistic, lacking any hope for the future, which can be read as a message that Japanese society was failing to find its own cultural, social, and political identity and can be seen as a call for change and renewal. As if hatched from an American B-movie, and not distributed in France until 1986, the film is credited with saving Shōchiku studios from bankruptcy during the rise of television and the fall of cinema attendance in Japan, pre-dating many of the much later modern films of youth culture alienation, including nearly all of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s films, which fill the screen with magnificent neon colors and a pulsating sensuality. Shot by Takashi Kawamata, the bright colors are garishly out of place (intentionally avoiding the color green, Nagisa Oshima: Banishing Green, so he took great care to exclude trees and shrubs), especially in the industrial wasteland where they wander, featuring industrial noises and documentary style images of massive construction taking place, images evoking the actual building a new society, with Ōshima using long takes, extreme close-ups, distorted angles, and odd geometric shapes to go along with a jittery, handheld camera style where any hopes of equilibrium are skewed by the restless instability of adolescence, where poor decisions and immaturity prevail, portraying a heartless, disconnected world filled with a cold dissonance.
Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Cruel Story of Youth) - Review ... excellent video review (with Engish subtitles) by Italian film critic Adriano Aprà (with spoilers in the last minute or so) on YouTube (8:26)
Cruel Story of Youth (1960) Watch HD - Vídeo Dailymotion entire movie on HD with English subtitles on YouTube (1:36:47)
