On devient tous fous

The life of bitter teenager Jiro Sugita (Tamio Kawaji) spirals out of control as his petty lawlessness and his resentment of his mother's relationship with a married man leads to violence. Seijun Suzuki's teen melodrama is an unpleasant snapshot of life amongst disaffected youth who were born in the ruins of Japan just as the War in the Pacific was ending. Jiro's resentment comes from his mother being forced to take money from a lover in order to survive, money that Jiro hates but willing demands (the idea of being dependent on outside money may have been very resonant with audiences during Japan's 'rebuilding' stage). The film is quite 'adult', with brief glimpses of nudity, issues such as abortion and youth prostitution, and candid and casual off-screen brutality (there are several indifferent references to girls in the gang being raped by multiple boys). I found it more disturbing than a comparable American 'JD' pic, possibly because the youth look more 'innocent' (especially the girls) and less like the 'cliched' street hoodlums you'd see in, for example, a John Cassavetes film. The direction is quite effective although the acting was a bit melodramatic at times (although angry teens are not particularly known for subtleties of behaviour). The cinematography is good except for a number of weak and obvious back-projection scenes and the young cast, notably Yoshiko Nezu as Jiro's 'in for anything' girlfriend Toshimi and Shinako Nakagawa as her desperate pregnant friend Etsuko, is quite good. An interesting look at the darker side of Japanese post-war culture, well-made but not for all tastes.

What a great, flowing, virtuoso bit of filmmaking. Effortless interlocking scenes moving one to the next. One character's bit of drama bleeds seamlessly into another. This interlocking style is not originated in this film but many of the more recent films have popularized something that this film did so well 50 years before. There is an apparent joyous enthusiasm with which this film is made and, while the subject matter is at times very intense and not always satisfying, there is an infectious energy on display by a doubtlessly talented director.

Crash, Pulp Fiction and other similar recent films owe a bit of a debt to Everything Goes Wrong and fans of those should take particular interest in this one.

I went into it with no expectations as I knew nearly zero about it and at the time I am posting this review only 16 people have even voted for it. A criminally under-appreciated film and it made an immediate impression on me which has continued to grow to admiration. After seeing Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill, Take Aim at the Police Van, Everything Goes Wrong is my favorite film by Seijun Suzuki so far.

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Also known as The Madness of Youth - if you want to find this one on the internet, that's the title I found it under. And you'll want to find this one. It's one of Suzuki's best. It shares many similarities with Koreyoshi Kurahara's The Warped Ones, which I watched (and reviewed) a while back, and it even stars the same actor, Tamio Kawaji, again playing a disaffected youth (Everything Goes Wrong came out less than a month afterward). In The Warped Ones, Kawaji was a total ass, completely despicable. He's kind of despicable here, but the story does more to redeem him - to show that he's just a confused child rebelling against his elders.

After his father died in the war, his mother shacked up with a rich, married man. Fifteen years later, he's still hanging around, and Kawaji thinks of his mother as a prostitute. He kind of thinks of all women that way. It doesn't help that the women he hangs around with are extremely promiscuous (while this comes before the era of the true pinky films, the descriptions of sex are surprisingly graphic). The film is very moralistic, but the characters are well written, and the script flows quickly between several different plot lines (it runs a mere 71 minutes but feels absolutely stuffed - though not overstuffed). The real star, of course, is Seijun Suzuki. It's often said that Suzuki was nothing but a factory worker for Nikkatsu at the time. That may be, but a Hell of a worker he was, and his camera darts around breathlessly and beautifully. You know that famous between the legs shot in Kurosawa's Yojimbo? Suzuki beat him to it by a year (he probably wasn't the first either, but I know I always associate that shot with Yojimbo). The editing is also tremendous, although, supposedly, Suzuki would have nothing to do with that. After all, this was just one of four films the director would make in 1960.

Tamio Kawaji doesn't like that his mother has been a married businessman's mistress for fifteen years. He lives on the money, but it makes him miserable. He earns some money stealing cars, and his girlfriend, Yoshiko Nezu, sides with him. She tries to raise money for a friend who's gotten pregnant, only she doesn't want to bother the boy she is living with about an abortion. As the situation spirals out of control, the older couple tries to talk with the youngster, to explain things to him, but he doesn't want to hear about it.

Seijun Suzuki's movie about juvenile delinquency and the causes of it is sensationalistic, and offers no real solutions, only a beginning of one. Mostly, though, it's about violence and anger and alienation.

The united states title for this is everything goes wrong, while in japanese, it translates to everything is crazy. Jiro is a confused, angry, youth, trying to grow up in the crazy world around him. This was 1960, so japan was starting to get back on its feet after world war two. When he discovers that his mother is hanging around with a married man, he must deal with his own feelings, in spite of the fact that the married man has helped them financially over the years. So Jiro does what a youth in a city does... he joins a gang and goes down the wrong path. Starts pulling jobs and making bad decisions. It's pretty good, with lots of peppy, jazzy music. The tone always seems to be upbeat and fast, even when Jiro is breaking into cars. The director must really like jazz. Story by Akira Ichijo. Directed by Seijun Suzuki. Wikipedia dot com says he went to film school after the war, and about ten years later, began directing films. This is pretty good... has almost the same plot as Blackboard Jungle, which had come out five years prior.