Youth Of The Beast (15.)
Directed by Seijun Suzuki.
Starring Jo Shishido, Misako Watanabe and Tamio Kawaji. Japanese with subtitles. 92 mins. 1963. Released on October 27th by Eureka! as part of their Masters Of Cinema series.
Jo (Shishido) is a chipmunk faced menace who is on the loose in a bright and colourful early sixties Tokyo that is all lit up like it's waiting for a musical to start, but will have to make do with some gangster mayhem. Using a few well placed acts of violence Jo announces himself to the mob but no sooner has he got in with one band of Yakuza he is playing them off against their local rivals in the time honoured style of Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars.
The plot may be standard but Suzuki's staging has a gaudy energy that is all his own. Like a restless adolescent it has little patience with the intricacies of plot; it just wants to forward wind to the good bits. And Youth of the Beast is all good bits, all violent confrontations and shoot outs. Presumably the title had some relevance in the original screenplay but whatever it was has been lost in the rush to get through everything as quickly as possible. Ideally it would be nice to know what is going on but on the few occasions the film does stop and explain the story it is interminable.
The staging though is what we are here for and there are a number of majestic moments. The best comes early on when Jo can be seen entertaining a table of ladies in a dark nightclub while in a brightly lit office behind one way mirror the Yakuza observe him. The richness and care of his compositions belie the fact that Suzuki was basically charged with churning out double bill features as quickly as possible.
Thanks to some ill conceived plastic surgery, star Jo Shishido sports a pair of puff out cheeks that preempt Brando's in The Godfather. He is a relentless and ruthless tough guy but with his brown tanned skin he is very 60s variety star, very Vegas. It is amazing any of the Yakuzas fall for him, he seems inherently inauthentic. Watching him you can imagine a universe where George Lazenby got the Bond job a year earlier, and is in the You Only Live Twice scenes where he has been disguised as a Japanese man.
Extras.
Just a 25 minutes talk from Far East Asia film expert Tony Rayns which is certainly insightful and informative.
Directed by Seijun Suzuki.
Starring Jo Shishido, Misako Watanabe and Tamio Kawaji. Japanese with subtitles. 92 mins. 1963. Released on October 27th by Eureka! as part of their Masters Of Cinema series.
Jo (Shishido) is a chipmunk faced menace who is on the loose in a bright and colourful early sixties Tokyo that is all lit up like it's waiting for a musical to start, but will have to make do with some gangster mayhem. Using a few well placed acts of violence Jo announces himself to the mob but no sooner has he got in with one band of Yakuza he is playing them off against their local rivals in the time honoured style of Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars.
The plot may be standard but Suzuki's staging has a gaudy energy that is all his own. Like a restless adolescent it has little patience with the intricacies of plot; it just wants to forward wind to the good bits. And Youth of the Beast is all good bits, all violent confrontations and shoot outs. Presumably the title had some relevance in the original screenplay but whatever it was has been lost in the rush to get through everything as quickly as possible. Ideally it would be nice to know what is going on but on the few occasions the film does stop and explain the story it is interminable.
The staging though is what we are here for and there are a number of majestic moments. The best comes early on when Jo can be seen entertaining a table of ladies in a dark nightclub while in a brightly lit office behind one way mirror the Yakuza observe him. The richness and care of his compositions belie the fact that Suzuki was basically charged with churning out double bill features as quickly as possible.
Thanks to some ill conceived plastic surgery, star Jo Shishido sports a pair of puff out cheeks that preempt Brando's in The Godfather. He is a relentless and ruthless tough guy but with his brown tanned skin he is very 60s variety star, very Vegas. It is amazing any of the Yakuzas fall for him, he seems inherently inauthentic. Watching him you can imagine a universe where George Lazenby got the Bond job a year earlier, and is in the You Only Live Twice scenes where he has been disguised as a Japanese man.
Extras.
Just a 25 minutes talk from Far East Asia film expert Tony Rayns which is certainly insightful and informative.
