Naked Youth DVD, 1960

It’s 1960. Two young Japanese girls are trying to hitch-hike home from a busy thoroughfare. One girl is dropped off and then the guy doing the driving cracks on to her pretty friend. We should go out for something to eat, he says. I don’t think so, the young girl replies. Seconds later, the two of them are frantically scrabbling over one another, the man trying to have his wicked way, the girl trying to wriggle free. Another young man appears on the scene and soon the scrabbling gives way to brawling in the street. The next day or maybe the day after that, the young woman is on a date with a young man who is desperate for sex, the two of them wandering across wide logs floating in the sea when trouble starts. He pushes her in and won’t let her get out of the water until she agrees to let him do whatever he wants. She almost drowns before she capitulates. Afterwards, breathily, with seawater drying on her face, she asks him what he’s so angry about. Oh, everything, he replies.

This is Naked Youth, one of three films made by Nagisa Oshima, the director most famous these days for In the Realm of the Senses, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and Gohatto, in 1960. Although by no means in the calibre of his best work, Naked Youth is interesting for a variety of reasons. As a glimpse into how the always provocative Oshima developed, Naked Youth offers a plethora of clues as to where he would go next. The film was also responsible for ushering in what became known as Nuberu bagu, the Japanese equivalent of the French New Wave – with scores of young directors (such as Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, Yasuzo Masumura, Susumi Hani and Hiroshi Teshigara) attracting international attention thereafter. Curiously, though, where the French New Wave was driven by a group of hot young directors straight out of film school, Nuberu bagu largely rejected academia (although Oshima himself had far more in common with his French contemporaries than Japanese).

As such, Naked Youth (or Cruel Story of Youth as it is sometimes better known) is perhaps best viewed alongside something like The 400 Blows or A Bout De Souffle; one of a small handful of films that aimed to show you how the world really was whilst at the same time suggesting ways in which things could be changed for the better.

Peter Wild on 4th February 2008
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