Cruel Story of Youth

Yeah, I mean, obviously it doesn't have, uh, the power of, uh, Namie Amakusa, the, the, the lead from, from Blow The Night, and it's, doesn't have that realism.

But it, it was, uh, actually a, uh, an adaptation of Cruel Story of Youth, the book that was also made into a film in the, in the '60s.

Um, and it was a sort of adaptation of that, that, uh, Shusei Sony himself had wanted to make for a long time.

Hmm.

Uh, what's interesting to me though is seeing this movie came out in early 1958, May of 1958, so I think it was filmed one, o- one m- uh, assume probably in late 1957, uh, which is roughly three years before the beginnings of the Japanese New Wave, which I mentioned at the beginning of this, uh, podcast.

And, uh, it's interesting to me that, like Oshima for example, uh, probably the most famous of Japanese New Wave filmmakers, uh, he was being heralded as this visionary for breaking away from studio conventions and critiquing political disillusionment, uh, and youth angst, uh, in the Cruel Story of Youth in particular, uh, came out in 1960.

But here's Imamura in 1957, and he may not be doing it in as overt m- manner as Oshima, and I would argue that i- in actuality, his critique of these subject matters is a bit more subtle and, and more complex and, and, um, less, uh, O- uh, Oshima s- well, that's a...

It's a different thing.

We'll, we'll talk about Oshima sometime.

Cruel Story of Youth is-

Yeah

... a Sun Tribe movie too, which is a particular sort of-