☆ ☆ ☆ ½
Youth
of the Beast (1963) – S. Suzuki
No doubt Seijun Suzuki intended this
noirish drama to be confusing from the start, but this put me offside for a
while. You see, there is a double
suicide (or is it a murder?) right at the start (in black and white) and then,
unrelatedly, we start following (in colour) Joe Shishido, a ruthless gangster
(emulating the classic masterless ronin samurai), who makes trouble for, and
gets himself hired by, a family of yakuza.
Then Joe begins to play one gang of yakuza off another, playing both
sides, if you will, and gradually, we discover (in an offhand way) more about
his background. The plot slowly falls
together even as Joe resolves it for us (by solving the murder, of course). Director Suzuki seems more interested in
creating garishly coloured backdrops for unusually framed shots than the plot,
really. So, let’s just say things are
off-kilter most of the time and also in-your-face with sex, drugs, and violence
– but all of this is pretty cartoonish. An
odd fish (but typical of this director).
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