Invaderbank
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Cristal
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
WILLIAM FLANIGAN
Viewed on DVD. Set design =eight (8) stars; score = seven (7) stars. Director Ichirou Ikeda offers up a tongue-in-cheek, surrealistic depiction of a gangster turf war complete with an embedded police spy. The huge cast makes it virtually impossible to keep tract of which character is a member of which gang. But not to worry. It doesn't matter, as the lines spoken by rival gang members/leaders are close to identical (which is a self-parodied complaint often made during the film!). Ikeda seems intent on creating scenes that exhibit all forms of criminal activity that contemporary censors would allow! The movie includes a surprise ending although the script does have a few clue fragments of what's to come early on. Actor Jou Shishido ("chubby checks") appears in virtually every scene and is able to defy some laws of physics by being at two places at virtually the same time (courtesy of the film's editing process)! (Shishido had surgery to blow out his checks apparently because the actor believed this would make him appear tougher on screen. Does one look meaner with the Mumps?) Set designs of gangster offices are especially original. One is behind a panel of one-way mirrors in a nightclub and is sound proofed (enabling gang leaders to hold business meeting while watching customers and the entertainment). Another office is behind a movie theater screen (also sound proofed). Cinematography (wide screen, color) and scene lighting are fine. So is restoration. Translations/subtitles are close enough. Signs are translated. Score is particularly interesting. It successfully (and uniquely) bends jazz with rock&roll. In addition to chubby cheeks' over coming at least one macro law of physics, there are other (intentional?) amusing events such as: the title of the film (it is totally unrelated to the movie and seems to be bait for attracting young audiences); four burly gangsters often prying themselves out of tiny cars; screeching tires as cars turn corners on unpaved roads; and gun shots that always sound the same despite where they occur and which weapon is fired (the sound tract is over saturated with gun fire from smokeless weapons!). Grab lots of popcorn and enjoy! WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.
e_tucker
I watched my first Suzuki film, Gate of Flesh, many months ago and was fascinated, almost against my will, by its vivid mixture of cheesiness and style. I wasn't sure what it was that so intrigued me until I saw Youth of the Beast and realized that I was watching the director that Tarantino, Miike, Chan-wook Park all would like to be. He is the real deal, sui generis, derivative of no-one, who single handedly broke out of the doldrums of Nikkatsu Studio's b-unit yakuza film grind of the late 50s early 60s to turn the genre into a bona fide art form.The story is Yojimbo like, enemy gangs played off against each other by Jô Shishido, alpha-male extraordinaire, a maverick thug, possibly concealing extra bullets in his pudgy cheeks, who shows up with no apparent history but some serious baggage. But the story doesn't matter, it just a frame on which Suzuki hangs his surreal, over the top sensibility, using slyly inventive camera work, splashes of brilliant color, and astonishing set design to create a dark parody of the genre that displays the jazzy hyper kinetic chaos of post war Tokyo. The honorable gangster of the 50s is dead, summarily shot in the head by Suzuki's fiendish wit, and only fools and sadists remain.The set pieces sustain a freshness even 44 years later, and illuminate what more recent (and derivative) genre directors might be trying to achieve. A sadomasochistic interlude plays out in an impromptu backyard dust storm painted in brilliant yellows. The invasion of a yakuza foot soldier's apartment yields a ceiling festooned with inexplicable face-bumping model airplanes. A one way mirror in the office of a yakuza nightclub examines the oblivious decadence of its patrons as violence plays out in the foreground. The rival gang is unaccountably headquartered in a movie theater, where the characters lay plots in the projection room as giant heads peer in and disembodied voices provide an eerie and distracting backdrop. Suzuki compels us to watch snippets of various Japanese and American noirs while we are watching his movie, how clever. A series of quick cuts hop around amongst a collection of candy colored telephones returning in full circle to settle in a slickly kitsch ultra stylish hostess club, where the camera, set in an invisible wall, follows the action by gliding effortlessly up and down a string of booths.It begins to be difficult to avoid the idea that Suzuki might just be poking fun at our voyeuristic lust for cinematic sex and violence. As the film progresses I keep getting an image of a puckish little fellow giggling gleefully from behind the camera - his humor is so infectious and so playful that I can't help laughing at myself right along with him. His mise en scène is all about disengaged observation, and when he isn't cramming his audience inside walls or behind glass partitions so we can a better view of a nice bit of torture, he makes us stand with the rest of the rubberneckers, at a safe distance, where we can enjoy the fun of a vicious street brawl without getting blood on our shoes. The camera pulls back whenever physically possible, not to demonstrate the wood block beauty of classic Japanese cinema, but to show us ourselves, sitting in the dark watching, or leaning in to discover just who is speaking from all the way across a room. He creates the same sense of distance for his characters, scattering them them liberally throughout the room, so that conversations occur with cuts that must leap the distance from one side to the other, while backs are often turned, and profiles more common than full face shots. Like us, they are permitted no empathy, no connection, all puppets in Suzuki's absurd universe.But we're still nowhere near the bottom of Suzuki's bottomless bag of tricks. His situational comedy is as broad as his camera is sly, taking care to subvert every code and convention of the genre along the way. There is a lot of fun to be had here as well, including a particularly amusing heist scene involving ineptly applied stocking disguises, smoke bombs and undignified scrambling, or Jo's decidedly un-stoic petulance regarding some Yakuza style finger whittling.As for pacing, there is no fat to be trimmed, and no fades, no dissolves and sparse transitional scenes. Suzuki's cuts are disconcertingly abrupt, he flings out plot points with utter contempt, often allowing mere seconds for us to absorb information. Quite challenging while trying to read subtitles, I made liberal use of the rewind button.A driving, jazzy score punctuates the film throughout that not only matches the amped up mobility of the visuals but the innovative jump cuts. The Criterion transfer is worth mentioning, it's a joy to behold. It rare to find such a crisp, brilliant restoration, and there aren't many b-level Japanese films from this era that look this good. Bonus material reveals Suzuki to be just what I'd expect, a sweet and unpretentious little old guy with a naughty gleam in his eyes. He's not very forthcoming about his film but seems very entertained by all the questions. Jô Shishido also has a brief interview where he ruefully discusses his cheek implants.
chaos-rampant
That's what I like so much about Suzuki (and other genre directors from back then). He made genre pictures on studio demand yet sacrificed none of his personal style and artistic aspirations in the process. As a result, Youth of the Beast is as entertaining as it is visually fascinating, the work of a true master craftsman.Jo Shishido plays Jo, a hard-ass guy that won't take no for an answer who inflitrates the local yakuza mob and quickly gains the trust of the boss and his underlings. But when he plays this and another gang against each other, it becomes apparent he has a hidden agenda and operates for reasons of his own. The story is rock solid with enough twists and turns to keep things interested, a whole assortment of colourful (and sociopathic) characters and plenty of violence and hard-boiled badassitude to boot. OK, the violence is relatively tame by today's stadards, but unlike other yakuza flicks from the 60's and 70's, the main character in Suzuki's pictures is his style.Vibrant colours from every end of the palette are combined into beautiful frames, with meticulous attention to detail and an eye for composition. Suzuki is good doing black and white but his work operates on a whole other level when he takes on colour. Clearly a challenge for any director that had to make the transition from b/w to colour (as Sidney Lumet details in his book Making Movies), Suzuki here excels in the task. Unusual yet beautiful compositions include the opening scene which is in shot black and white with with the only exception of a flower appearing in colour, until flashy colour and loud swing music boom at the next cut to reveal a busy Japanese street; or the scenes where Jo and the rival gang boss talk to each other while an old b/w Japanese movie plays in the back; the golden clouds of sand that blow outside the boss's house. There are many such examples yet for all its artistic intent, Youth of the Beast never deviates from its goal: to tell a highly entertaining pulpy crime story of revenge. Not as gritty and nihilistic as the works of Kinji Fukasaku and with a dash of film noir, this is a great ride for fans of 60's crime cinema.
DICK STEEL
Youth of the Beast is pretty much acclaimed, but I just can't appreciate it very much, partly because it's quite a dated film - the 60s, and the execution reminded me of the old 60s Batman and the Green Hornet series, in its noir crime storyline as well as the use of the ol' fisticuffs to settle scores. Not that I didn't enjoy it though, but my smile stemmed more from the cheesiness.Of course when watching a film from the past, you got to approach it in the context when it was shown in. And it pretty much gave you a glimpse at old Japan, with its production sets, costumes, and acting style - which is exaggerated. Special effects and stunts were quite low key (probably groundbreaking for the era), with some shots suffering from sudden jump cuts, and looking raw. Certain stunts were found to be wanting, but again, for that era, it's adequately executed, though by today's standards, audiences would be more unforgiving.The violence too didn't let up, and for a Yakuza movie, violence is part and parcel to their lifestyle. There are a number of innovative techniques used, such as the flame from an aerosol can, and the insertion of a blade underneath the fingernail as a torture method to inflict pain. I was surprised too at the raw scratching off upholstery from a sofa set, which seemed quite realistically painful for the actress to perform.Director Seijun Suzuki actually helmed the movie Yumeji (1991), from which the theme song is used in Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love. Here, he crafts the movie from a novel by Haruhiko Oyabu, which could have served as inspiration for Lucky Number Slevin in its playing off mob bosses. Here, Jo Mizuno (Joe Shishido) infiltrates and joins a gang by forcing his way through to the top, beating up everyone and anyone who dare stands in his way.Impressed, he's given a stint with the gang, and slowly, a mystery begins to unravel as to his motivations and objectives to doing what he does. It plays out rather straightforward, and you would have guessed his intentions pretty earlier on in the movie, but what impressed is how simple it is to style a movie in this manner back in the 60s. Taking seemingly simple everyday locations like nightclubs and cinemas and having shady dealings taking place under a legitimate business front, does seem rather suggestive of how gangsters operate at the time.I'd pretty much recommend this to those who have high cheese tolerance, or fans of the swinging 60s era movies. Nothing much really to shout about.The Criterion DVD comes with an essay insert, the theatrical trailer (60s trailers all have those sensational big words covering 90% of the screen, very nostalgic), a 4"48' interview with director Seijun Suzuki, and a 7"56' interview with actor Joe Shishido. For a Criteriod DVD, it's pretty much barebones by standards.
