Kurutta kajitsu

This film is about a bunch of young men who live the good life (none have jobs, but they have money) in post-war Japan. The film focuses on two brothers and their mutual affection for a young lady named Eri. I don't blame them for being infatuated with her, she is next to beautiful. First its the younger brother Haruji who is able to woo her. Then the older brother Natsuhisa goes for her, out of both desire and jealousy. Eri turns out to be married to an American who spends very little time with her, so she is able to be involved in these affairs. Although this may seem a bit tame now, it was a scandalous film in 1956. It ushered in a Japanese new wave, or it at least suggested one was imminent. The film becomes better with time, as you focus on the love triangle. The actors and Mie Kitahara, who plays Eri, are all convincing. The DVD has commentary from Donald Richie, who is an authority on Japanese film. Again, risqué for the time, tame now (but so is "Rebel Without A Cause" and thats a great film), it is definitely worth your time.

Natsuhisa and Haruji are brothers. Natsuhisa, the older brother, is a bit of a nihilist, devoting all his time to booze and women and hanging with his friends with similar pursuits. Haruji hangs around with his brother, but doesn't approve of his lifestyle. Haruji meets Eri and they date. Natsuhisa is awe struck that his brother has got such a stunning girl, and is determined to find out why. He finds out her secret, and blackmails her into starting a sexual relationship with him. A surprisingly bleak and raunchy film for 1950's Japan. The ending is quietly devastating.

This movie will fool you into thinking that its a story about something far more innocent that it actually is... im being vague so as to not give away any of the fun details. I don't know how to put it except to say that I really enjoyed the ride it took my heart on... first I was grinning stupidly at a tale of young love and by the end I had to pause for a moment to realize that my face was contorted in all sorts of disbelief and horror.... awesome!!!

One of the things I enjoy about this movie is that the true villains don't make much of an appearance. Its the character's own spoiled and frivolous lifestyles handed to them by their parents and sexual exploitation by foreigners that ruin these characters long before they ruin each other.

When the mother says, "don't hang out with your brother and his friends, they are horrible brutes etc etc" to which the boy replies "well,you raised him." In the movie this was a joke, and the characters allhad a nice chuckle... but that was the most serious point the story conveyed - the capitalist dream imploding - cuz lets face it, if you have everything you want, you're probably going to be bored and miserable.

In the same way, the very young very beautiful Hari marries the old white curr for his money, but realizes she's lost the most important thing, something priceless, her childhood innocence.

In my interpretation, its not the evil within these characters that leads to their undoing, its the evil they were subjected to. I want to believe there's good in them, and the actors do a brilliant job of keeping us wondering and uncertain about that because of the extremely nuanced and balanced performances.

The actors who play the brothers are brilliant, the younger especially, who has a very understated but creepy air about him...

In the end, all i can say is "bone chilling!!!" haha... watch it.

What a fascinating film this is. Elements of it surprised me for 1956, and in particular for a Japanese movie. It seems to me a forerunner of the French New Wave, and that this archetypal 'Sun Tribe' effort represents an even bigger departure from traditional Japanese cinema at the time than those films would be to the French. No wonder François Truffaut was such a fan of it.

The story is straightforward - two brothers fall for the same woman - but this is a film about tone, and context. Everything about it screams post-war, disaffected youth. A group of young men are bored, critical of traditional ways, and looking for good times - and young ladies. The younger of the two brothers (Masahiko Tsugawa) has an innocence about him, and falls for a pretty woman (Mie Kitahara) without realizing she's already married. The drama deepens when his older brother (Yujiro Ishihara) begins putting the moves on her behind his back.

The openness with which Kitahara's sexuality is displayed is a little shocking, though there is a grace to it, and it's refreshing to see. She deceives her American husband, and enjoys being the center of attention at a party. With the younger brother she needs to provide encouragement for him to make love to her, in one scene moving his hands up on to her breast. With the older brother, she gives way to his forceful overtures, even after saying 'no' initially. If that sort of thing is a trigger to you, you may want to avoid this one, as it also has the young men competing early on to see who can bring the hottest girl to a party, and other testosterone-fueled chatter. In general, the characters are hard to like, which may also be a turn-off. On the other hand, that's part of the point, and the film shows a reckless and sexually carefree youth in ways that are less inhibited than Hollywood at the time.

All of the principal actors turn in solid performances, and Masumi Okada is quite debonair in a supporting role. Mie Kitahara is quite pretty, and it's interesting that she would marry Ishihara, the actor who plays the older brother, just four years later. There is a little unevenness in the shots director Kô Nakahira captures - some are just beautiful, while others seem low-budget - but it's an impressive first film, and all the more so as it was a few years ahead of the French New Wave (e.g. Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958), Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959), Godard's Breathless (1960), etc). It seems to me the film ought to be better known.

Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit is, to put it mildly, an immensely welcome addition to the Criterion roster. It is uniquely modernist, impressionistically rendered, sensual in its physicality, and absolutely unlike anything to precede it in Japanese cinema. To put it bluntly, Ko's film is as significant a break from aesthetic (and moral) traditions as Godard's Breathless would prove to be two years later. The story – nominally an attempt to cash in on the "sun tribe" fashion, whereby children of the wealthy would wile away their summers sun bathing and boating (an unthinkable luxury before the 1950s) – follows the travails of two selfish and licentious brothers whose love of the same girl yields to hyperbolic tragedy of epic proportions. Whether the ending is meant as a conservative suggestion of the moral repercussions precipitated by the making idle of one's hands, or something more bleakly Sartrean, is up to interpretation. What is clear is that none who see it shall ever forget. An epochal masterpiece, based on a book by the current mayor of Tokyo!