Kyônetsu no kisetsu

Japanese films in the 50s and 60s were just great. This is one of the best.

Loved the new wave 'Sun Tribe' filmmaking, loved the jazz soundtrack, hated the main character. That's probably the point, but this film takes the 'wild youth' genre to such an extreme that it was unpleasant to watch. You've got a guy who commits assault, grand theft, and rape, a guy who laughs in people's faces, acts like a complete bore and eats like a pig, and yet, the film often puts him in the positive light of the cool rebel listening to hip American jazz. It never rounds the corner to do anything else in its 76 minute run time, and the plot line with the couple he torments is silly. It's a shame because the film has such energy in the way Kurahara directed it.

Great looking, but ultimately rambling story of two thugs and a prostitute who get out of prison an continue their wanton ways, while taking revenge on, and repeatedly crossing paths with, the people who put them there.

Playing like a Japanese Breathless or Rebel Without a Cause, this is wonderful looking movie. The film was clearly shot on real locations so it has a sense of place that few films I've seen can match. Luscious black and white photography is arresting to see. I'm guessing the cities and country sides never looked this good.

The cast is very good and keep you watching even when the plot seems to be going nowhere for a good chunk of the first half.

Thats the rub, the plot. This hip and happening tale of young Japan rambles around for a good chunk of it going nowhere. Its not that its bad, its just it took a long time to get where it was going, or at least feel like it was heading somewhere. The point of the film is to contrast the three antiheroes with the pair who sent them away, and who are seen, in the end to be just as awful as those they despise. Once that happens the first time we're only left with a repetition of the point the two or three more times it happens. Sprinkled with profanity, rape, robbery and abortion this would have gotten banned in many communities had it showed up in the US at the time of release in Japan. Even today its more than likely liable to get a rise out of most audience. Its a walk on a dark side that rattles you with its matter of factness.

Is it worth seeing? On most levels yes. Its a wonderful antidote for what was being done elsewhere in the world at the same time (its also more real than many similar Hollywood films). The music is great and the hip, often nihilistic attitude almost saves it all. On the other hand odds are that this is probably not going to be a film you watch a second time, there's nothing wrong with it, its just not as meaty as it thinks it is or we hoped it would be. Ultimately its a movie I admire more than I like.

The social situation in Rebel Without a Cause looks pretty healthy in comparison to Akira's life in this film. Make no mistake, the director probably didn't want you to find this guy empathetic or romantic regardless of his ingenuity, optimism, or opinions on abstract expressionism. He isn't so much a character with an arc as a force of nature motivating others, a plot device.

Oddly enough, The Warped Ones is really a conservative film even if it doesn't realize it, warning of the breakdown of the family unit, the failure of the reform system, the rise of gang violence, and the perils of Western culture eroding traditional Japanese values. Everyone and everything that comes into contact with the sneering, jazz-deranged lunatic tainted or perverted. Akira merely the flea carrying the plague virus. Gotta give the film credit for not copping out at the end.

If someone tells you that the youth of yesterday, were so much better behaved, have them see this film from Japan in 1960.

The film has been compared to Breathless by Godard. The one difference though I would say is in its protagonist. In Breathless, Jean Paul Belmondo's character was kind of cool, and I could see perhaps young people wanting to be like him. The protagonist if any think does not have these qualities. He comes across as crazy, almost psychotic, and a real loser. In many ways his character is more real than Belmondo's. I am not sure, but I think the film might be taking place in Tokyo, but the Japanese city we are presented with is nothing like the Paris of Breathless. It is ugly, you can almost feel the heat, and you wonder how it must even smell.

Like this directors later film, 'Black Sun' He also seems to be criticizing the use of music in the way it might block people from reality. Their is a scene in a bar, where jazz music our protagonist enjoys listening to, when the lead female protagonist, who had been raped by him, stops the music from playing, and he almost goes crazy It results him driving to the ocean with his black friend, (Chico Rolands from Black Sun), and go swimming. It is also a criticism of modern art, and those who supposedly practice it, or admire it. Though at the same time, I wonder the way the director films this movie, especially the stolen auto sequence at the beginning, if this film might be artsy at times in itself, and not know it.

At the same time, hovering over this film, are Westerners, the men who take the women from the Japanese to have for exchange for money. This film I guess is before the big economic boom in Japan, and shows the contempt that Japanese perhaps felt towards the West, especially the US. Their is a line that our protagonist says regarding Jazz, 'the blacks invented it, the whites stole it, and now we have it. We are worse than them.

Chico Roland as Gill is perhaps the one foreigner this film respects. Being black, it is ironic as Japan has been accused of being racist towards blacks, which was somewhat demonstrated in Black Sun. I would like to learn more about Chico Rolands, who he is, and how he began working in Japan. It is regrettable that Criterion on their Eclipse series, didn't supply audio commentaries which might shed some light. Even here on IMDb, their is no info where and when he was born or if he died. I do wish his character was somewhat expanded in the film, and we would know who this character is.

The ending is interesting. I am for a woman's right to choose, but the films ending is the only one I think of that can come close to making an anti-abortion statement, as our protagonist looks up at the sky ceiling of the hospital, as if looking up to god.