Kyônetsu no kisetsu (1960)

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1. 

   onuryz

   What a camera movement, amazing work in cinematography! 5 years 6 months ago
2. 

   idjutt

   great jazzy and nihilistic movie that is surprisingly violent for its age as well as now. 8 years 5 months ago
3. 

   Siskoid

   Koreyoshi Kurahara's The Warped Ones goes for broke in terms of presenting unlikable characters, specifically the irredeemable delinquent (criminal is really word) Akira who, with every breath, repudiates proper Japanese society (and his friends aren't a great bunch either). One character calls him the modern man, and it's a believable statement for Japan, which by 1960 had a generation of war orphans living in a disillusioned, rudderless, occupied country. Akira's obsession with jazz, an American form, takes things into the symbolic, and his violation of a young woman (and subsequent attempts to dishonor her and her fiancé who had engineered his last juvenile incarceration) essentially makes him an American avatar doing the same to Japan, corrupting its values and shaming its defeated people. The scene with Akira and a black former G.I., taking a ride in a sports car and going swimming perhaps exemplifies America's deafness to people's suffering overseas, even when they are responsible. That's perhaps the only time Akira is at all sympathetic, otherwise portrayed as an amoral animal, grimacing and moving like an ape (which has disturbing racist undertones I can't quite decode), actively LOOKING to do wrong so he can stick it to the Man. Along the way, he's started to think EVERYONE is the Man, is the problem. Dangerous and disturbing, even the camera work looks like daring guerilla stuff. 8 months 1 week ago

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