Youth of the Beast [Criterion Collection]

Director: Seijun Suzuki Seijun Suzuki

Overview

Youth of the Beast marked a turning point in director Seijun Suzuki's career. No longer content to just crank out production-line gangster films, here Suzuki starts to assert his own voice. The plot is fairly typical for the genre: chipmunk-cheeked Jo Shishido stars as ex-cop Jo Mizuno, who muscles his way into the shadowy world of the yakuza. He gets hired by the clan that killed his former partner while double-dealing with the clan's rival. Yet the plot contains some particularly Suzuki-like details. Why is Jo's partner more interested in guns than in women? Why does Hide, the notorious gay gangster, always slash the face of anyone who mentions his mother? What does this all have to do with the Takeshita School of Knitting? Suzuki's audacious style heightens the absurdity and artifice of both the genre and the medium with pop-art colors, loopy camera placements, and bizarre, dream-like images: A feather-clad dancer silently struts behind sound-proofed two-way mirrors, a pink dust storm serendipitously occurs while a pimp whips a junkie prostitute. The film is a dizzying visual feast whose tone Seijun Suzuki would amplify to the most absurd heights in his later films, Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded to Kill (1967).

Product Details

Release Date:	01/11/2005
UPC:	0037429203323
Original Release:	1963
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:32:00
Sales rank:	22,432

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer; Video interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and actor Joe Shishido, made by Nikkatsu in 2001; Original theatrical trailer; New and improved English subtitle translation; A new essay by film critic Howard Hampton

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jo Shishido	Jo Mizuno,Actor
Tomio Aoki	Actor
Nobuo Kaneko	Actor
Masao Shimizu	Actor
Kinzo Shin	Actor
Tamio Kawachi	Actor
Misako Watanabe	Kumiko Takeshita

Technical Credits

Seijun Suzuki

Director

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. Double Suicide [2:44]
2. The Stranger [6:31]
3. Nomoto [2:58]
4. Classy [2:09]
5. Shakedown [5:18]
6. Condolences [2:17]
7. Careless [3:57]
8. Top Salary [6:09]
9. Broken [2:25]
10. "It Excites Him" [5:21]
11. The Backbone [3:06]
12. Framed [6:14]
13. Familiar Face [5:25]
14. Confessions [4:22]
15. Honor [2:37]
16. Setup [6:25]
17. Help [6:57]
18. Double Play [5:09]
19. Who and Why [2:50]
20. The Sixth Woman [8:34]

Menu

Side #1 --
   Play the Movie
   Chapters
   Color Bars
   Seijun! Joe!
      Seijun Interview
      Joe Interview
   Trailer
   Subtitles
      Subtitles: On
      Subtitles: Off