Youth of the Beast

Youth of the Beast (野獣の青春, Yajū no seishun) is a 1963 Japanese yakuza film directed by Seijun Suzuki. Much of the film is set in Tokyo, Japan.

Youth of the Beast
Directed bySeijun Suzuki
Produced byKeinosuke Kubo[1]
Screenplay by
  • Ichiro Ikeda
  • Tadaaki Yamazaki[1]
Based onA novel
by Haruhiko Oyabu
Starring
Music byHajime Okumura[1]
CinematographyKazue Nagatsuka[1]
Production
company
Release date
  • 21 April 1963 (1963-04-21) (Japan)
Running time
92 minutes[3]
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Synopsis

To infiltrate a criminal organization responsible for the death of a colleague, Detective Tajima adopts the persona of a thug and plays yakuza bosses off against each other.

Cast

Release

Youth of the Beast was released in Japan on April 21, 1963.[4][2][3] It received an American release in the United States by Nikkatsu in 1993.[2]

Youth of the Beast was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection on January 11, 2005.[5] Eureka Entertainment released the film in on both Blu-ray and DVD release in 2014 as part of the Masters of Cinema range.[6]

Reception

In contemporary reviews in Japan, the film was generally ignored.[4] The film was not placed in the years top 40 films by Kinema Junpo and managed to place at 21st place in Eiga Hyron's through a single ballot vote.[4]

From retrospective reviews, Michael Brooke of Sight & Sound described the film as the first of Suzuki's Nikkatsu films to feature "what became recognised (albeit far from immediately) as his characteristic approach", which Brooke described as "wildly over-composed and colour-coordinated (even the smoke billowing out of a wrecked car is a fetching reddish-brown)" stating that its "style and substance virtually indivisible and equally exhilarating."[7] Brooke found that "Suzuki doesn't so much undermine conventional gangster flick cliches as turn them up to 11, creating a powerfully satiric effects in the process"[7]

Remake

John Woo announced in 2012 that he would direct a remake of Youth of the Beast titled Day of the Beast.[8] The film is set to be produced by Woo and Terence Chang's Lion Rock Productions along with Nikkatsu.[8] The film is set in Tokyo where a Westerner becomes entered into a gang war between the Yakuza and Cold War Russian mafia.[8] The film will be written by Rob Frisbee.[8] Following the box-office disappointment of The Crossing, Woo and producer Terence Chang disbanded Lion Rock Productions.[9]

See also

Footnotes
  1. Galbraith IV 1996, p. 451.
  2. Galbraith IV 1996, p. 452.
  3. 野獣の青春 (in Japanese). Nikkatsu. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
  4. Veith, Frederick; Kaffen, Phil (2014). Seijun and the System (booklet). Masters of Cinema. p. 5. EKA70148.
  5. "Youth of the Beast". AllMovie. Retrieved November 9, 2016.
  6. "Youth of the Beast [Yajû no seishun]". Eureka Video. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  7. Brooke, Michael (December 2014). "New Releases". Sight & Sound. Vol. 24 no. 12. British Film Institute. p. 101.
  8. McClintock, Pamela (16 May 2012). "Cannes 2012: John Woo Set to Remake Classic Japanese Mafia Pic 'Youth of the Beast'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  9. Shackleton, Liz (30 June 2017). "Terence Chang talks China market challenges and new ventures". Screen Daily. Retrieved 10 July 2017.

References
  • Galbraith IV, Stuart (1996). The Japanese Filmography: 1900 through 1994. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0032-3.
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