User Reviews

This is a curious film, definitely of its time, but not from France. The two lovers Kyoschi and Makoto have a devil may care attitude about things. At times, you want to shake the female lead (Makoto) and tell her to be more responsible. Kyoschi is sometimes just this side of brutal to her, both physically and psychologically. The film reminds me a bit of "Rebel Without A Cause" and even "Breathless", which is more than likely intentional. For a Japanese film, it is fairly gritty. My only complaint is that most of the characters besides the two star crossed/unfortunately matched lovers are underwritten. I wonder if anyone thought at that time to show this film to youths in Japan, to let them know that falling in love is not always the true path to happiness. An interesting, fully watchable film.

This is an interesting story about how stupid and self-destructive people—young people in this case—can be. This movie was released in 1960, but look around and it's clear that the issues it brings up—although in a somewhat overly melodramatic way—continue to be relevant today, and probably always will be as long as human beings exist. The previous reviewer has the right to their negative opinion, but I think they missed the big picture, perhaps they are just too young to know any better.

Besides following a good storyline, it is also well-shot. The cinematography is crisp. And the overall nature of the photography gives the film a fantastic and hermetic quality. It's gritty, and obviously seeks to be realistic, but it has the feel of a fable or a morality tale.

Kiyoshi is a student with a completely immoral attitude towards women (and other things too). His young lover Makoto seeks adventure with him. Unlike her younger sister, a former left winger she doesn't bother about changing the society but she just wants fun, but the completely egotist attitude of her lover brings about ruin for both.

the beginning of the film which is ingenious and visually very inspiring is followed by a rather mediocre middle part, where their method of gaining money by luring middle aged men into a trap is described excessively. Nevertheless you don't get to know if the first scene of the film is already a part of that profession or a mere accident.

But now watch the film for yourself.

Oshima's film about adolescents in Tokyo was made in 1960 and is extraordinarly prescient: the picture he portrays of teenagers is far in advance of Swinging London and the Summer of Love in San Francisco. His teenage protagonists not only have sex together, but are involved in a sex-crime scam where the girl acts as a decoy for middle aged men to be blackmailed for trying to solicit her sexual services. The treatment of adolescent sexuality is far ahead of its time:Oshima gives us an accurate picture of teenage sexual activity that was unthinkable at the time. Brilliantly shot in cinemascope and exquisitely lit, the film is visually arresting. The sequence where the male lead eats an apple over his sleeping girlfriend's sleeping body is one of many highlights. A little known masterpiece by one of the masters of twentieth century Japanese cinema.

I liked seeing a raw, edgy, uninhibited side of Japan, and director Nagisa Oshima's style which mirrored the French New Wave directors from this period whom he admired. I liked the nice cuts and shots he captured, the rock and jazz music in the soundtrack, and his unflinching look at the cynicism present in Japan following WWII. There are some who relate it to "Rebel Without a Cause", but I don't like the comparison, because "Cruel Story of Youth" is over-the-top in its darkness and nihilism, none of the characters are likable, and one doesn't get any sense of the 'tragic, misunderstood, disaffected youth' or feel empathy towards them. There's also not enough content which relates their delinquent behavior to their upbringing or the times which would allow us to see it as an indictment of society.

You could say all this darkness is because life in Japan after the war was far darker than America, and while there is some truth to that, the film's biggest problem is the cruelty towards women which pervades it. You'll see attempted rape, rape (twice), attempted forced prostitution, an extortion scheme that involves using a woman as bait in dangerous situations, using women young and old as sex objects without any feeling, and utter indifference to abortion from a surprise pregnancy. Cruel story, indeed. The lead female character is shockingly stupid. There are some characters in films who are just stupid, regardless of their sex, but this is part of a larger theme. The film is all about in-your-face rebellion in its content, frankness, and even style (which I ordinarily love) – and yet how sad is that Oshima perpetuates the (very traditional) theme of misogyny. It's the combination of this and the general unlikeability of the whole thing that tempers my review score to an average rating, for what is such a landmark film from a talented director.

Not the best film for it's time; I've not seen anything else from this director, so I can't comment on that aspect of the film....

I had to remind myself several times while watching that this film is almost fifty years old. Elements of the story remind of today, especially the "scams" and the gritty aspect of teenage relationships and sexuality; at the same time I could never suspend my disbelief over the age of the actors -- they in no way resembled a high school girl or a college boy. The editing is a mess; I'm guessing that the director was attempting something artistic. The story, however, is very good. (Unfortunately the translation I watched mistranslated several scenes and so took the punch out from the delivery.)

I could recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see some of the grime of post-war Japan. But if you watch this film leave your modern sensibilities at home: Joan Collins said that she was rapped by the man that later became her husband and that seemingly topsy turvy attitude about sex and relationships is a large part of this film: the definitions were different, sex was novel on the big screen and peoples perspectives were not the same as today and I see no point in complaining about the gaps; I feel it's better to acknowledge them, think about how they might have been viewed and then look past them to the story the director was trying to tell.

There's a fair few Japanese crime films from the 1950s and 60s that have fun-sounding titles and end up being breezy, cool watches. I thought Cruel Story of Youth was going to be one of them, but I was off the mark. It's a darker and often confronting crime melodrama that I guess you could also describe as a twisted romance, but even that's a stretch, as the core relationship in the film is extremely troubling and is viewed by the movie as such, too.

That's to say the film's intentionally dark and unsettling, but that doesn't mean everyone would like it. That's also par for the course when it comes to director Nagisa Oshima. Naturally, this 1960 release isn't as extreme as his boundary pushing films from the 1970s onwards, but for its time, it would have been shocking. IMDb tells me it was banned in the UK, and only passed with a 15+ rating there in 2008.

Oshima is a great filmmaker though, and one that deserves mentioning alongside the likes of more well-known legendary Japanese directors like Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi. This one is not one of his very best, but it's very solid overall, and holds up well, in that its core story about a troubled, rebellious, dangerous, and youthful romance still has moments that are unsettling and impactful.

So overall, definitely not a fun gangster/crime flick as I expected, but what was there instead was quite impressive in its own right.

See Cruel Story of Youth. It is an amazing film. Oshima Nagisa is probably best known for his avant garde work- films like "In the Realm of the Senses" and "Diary of a Shinjuku Thief"- but his earlier work is more compelling, if less sensational. This film tells the story of Makoto and Kiyoshi, two youths who suffer from the social malaise typical of their generation. They express their frustration in violent and poetic ways, which makes up the substance of the film's narrative. But putting all that aside, it's beautifully filmed and by it's end, completely heartwrenching. The color contrast is almost unprecedented- bright reds and blues set against pitch blacks. At times it has the sensibility of a yakuza film- violence abounds and Oshima makes use of sharp pans typical of that genre, giving it a very cool, retro feel. At it's core it's a love story, but of a sort that modern audiences will probably never see in a contemporary film. It shows love as the cruelest thing imaginable, making it difficult to watch at times, but in the end, impossible to forget.

"Cruel story of youth" seems to me a hard movie to give any judgment about. Trying to watch at the events of the drama from the point of view of the time (historically), I see not more than a Japanese version of "lost generation" drama. The ideals of parents passed away in the recent war, the new aims were not created – is it not a universal generation crises of searching your own way in life? While watching the movie, I asked myself if it is necessary to search for any hidden message of the director… if there is one…

The characters and events are described in a very direct, comparable to the animation speed and simplicity way (that was one of the points which I could dare to compare with the "trash-movie" stylistic). There is a lot of "beating directly into the face" full of disguise scenes (for the year 1960 the movie is full of violence and sex – what I guess was pretty "fresh" and not known at that time). The message of the director was delivered in the right way, no doubt that the movie drew public attention – that is the other point which I appreciate in director's work.

Now to the heroes (or anti-heroes, as I think a lot of people would tell): the main heroes of the drama present the whole collection of sins and all kinds of misbehavior. The antipathy to them is growing with every their word and step. The two try to fight the way through to the future and… fail. There is no one around (false existence or practical non-existence of a good example neither in society nor in their own family) to give them the right answer on: what to do to be happy? As Kiyoshi says: "We only sell ourselves in order to go on living. No matter how I fight it, that's what the world is like." Isn't life disappointing?

Love and death are linked in quite an extravagant way in this movie, resulting in a kind of "romantic antiromantic". What is left at the end? A symptom of a lost generation's aimlessness and moral bankruptcy (and lost innocence)… No doubt, "Cruel story of youth" is a very expressive movie the main topic of which could get up-to-date anytime (as it is well known that times pass – men and problem stay the same).

I know that many consider this film to be a classic and my very low score will most likely trigger a lot of "not helpful" votes, but I just didn't like this film at all. I understand that the film is in many ways a Japanese film version of the important French film BREATHLESS, but like BREATHLESS, the leading characters are so unpleasant I had a hard time sticking with the film--though with THE CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH the characters a lot more unpleasant and slimy.

The girl is an idiot high schooler who slavishly follows after a college student who treats her like garbage. He rapes her twice at the beginning of the film and in return, she devotes herself to him!! The guy, in addition to being a rapist, is a violent user. The loves to fight and sleep around and does little to hide it from the girl. Considering that neither seem to ever go to class and don't have jobs, they earn money by setting up men to try to rape the girl--at which point the guy jumps out and beats up the men and takes their money. It sounds like a match made in heaven, right?! So why make the American title of the film "THE CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH"? What's cruel about the story--both characters choose to be evil and choose their fates. It isn't like they are somehow victims (though the film does try to paint it that way). Their lives are pointless and selfish. Rape, abortion, extortion, indifference--after a short time I found myself getting very tired of the whole thing and, oddly, when the film had it's supposed sad ending, I was thrilled! I say good riddance and bring me a film I can care about--not this nihilistic and nasty little film.

I got very little from this film, other than it furthered my impression of Oshima as a misanthrope with very little of substance to offer about the human condition he has so little feeling for, nor the people he apparently reviles. It is, indeed, a Cruel Story, as one iteration of the English title would have it, but it doesn't even have the cheap thrills offered by Oshima's best-known film in the US, usually referred to here as IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, but does share a remarkably ugly cinematographic color scheme (this might be a function of the prints and transfers I've seen, but both films in my viewing have been heavily into a reddish wash), fitting well with the remarkably ugly spirit with which both were offered. Not too impressed with the performances, either.