Naked youth

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Movie
German title Naked youth
Original title 青春 残酷 物語
Seishun Zankoku Monogatari
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1960
length 96 minutes
Rod
Director Nagisa Ōshima
script Nagisa Ōshima
production Tomio Ikeda
music Riichiro Manabe
camera Takashi Kawamata
cut Keiichi Uraoka
occupation

The Japanese feature film Naked Youth ( Japanese 青春 残酷 物語 , Seishun Zankoku Monogatari , German  “cruel story about youth” ; alternative title: Cruel stories of youth ) was the young director Nagisa Ōshima's first work that found a larger audience. The focus of the action is a young couple; the woman lets older men drive her in the car, and when he reaches the destination, her boyfriend threatens the man with scandal and beatings if he does not pay.

To the work

Based on the French Nouvelle Vague , a sophisticated advertising campaign announced the film as an example of a “new wave”. The director preceded the script for this film with an explanation: “It's about the story of young people who can only express their anger in a roundabout way. By showing the tragedy of the young people who could have had a beautiful youth but were cornered so much that they were left with a pitiful, pathetic defeat, I want to express my own indignation at the situation with which today's youth has to struggle. ” He relates the anger and despair that Ōshima ascribes to the youth to the mood of left-wing students after the renewal of the security pact between Japan and the USA in 1960. As a result, he sees the delinquency of his protagonists as an expression of this anger and considers the blackmail they commit legitimate. One critic: "You are caught in the trap of mutual exploitation: you lie in wait for the older men for the money, the old people abuse the bodies of the boys for money." With the exception of the bathing scenes on the logs, the film takes place in closed rooms and in of the night. The film repeatedly switches to shots that show the people in the front seats from behind in the car - on the one hand a break with conventional rules of assembly, on the other hand a cheap method of shooting because the cameraman simply takes a seat on the back seat.

German-speaking reception

Shortened to 76 minutes, Nackte Jugend had its German premiere on November 16, 1962. The catholic film service found the depicted atrocities unbearable and the protagonist's conversion to love and sacrifice “not believable in view of the practiced immense cynicism and almost bestial disposition” . And: “(...) mentally and figuratively a bit diffuse sometimes, the portrayal with well-appropriated technique remains on the level of routine film of French provenance - only, as I said, more sadistic, Far Eastern, despite international airs. Not a testimonial example, rather useless defeatist drama. ” In 1963, in the left-wing film review , Dietrich Kuhlbrodt assumed that the film equated students = thugs = criminals. He warned against looking for conventional dramatic patterns, because individual events were unlinked, and recommended "let yourself drift and enjoy the description." This made the "unbearable clichés" less important. “The film gains authenticity in individual gestures, plot fragments and reactions and at the locations .” Unfortunately, these beautiful details would “be smeared with sticky, edifying emotional values .” The story drips from the story that people have to help each other and do not fit the formal sobriety . “All too rashly, this Japanese film has adapted formal news and carried away the traditional legacy. The "Naked Youth" is only a modern film from the outside. " Apart from a few rude and cheeky scenes, it essentially belongs to the very widespread genre in Japan that evokes a sense of family. "A humanistic optimism under authoritarian-uncleous guidance!"

In 1986 , Nackte Jugend was shown again in full length in German cinemas. The reviews at the time contrast clearly with the earlier reviews. On the occasion of the recapitulation, Der Spiegel wrote that the film was formally ahead of its time and still shows how Oshima wanted to turn youthful frustration into pure political anger. Karlheinz Oplustil from epd Film also spoke of the palpable anger at everything with which Ōshima presented an "equally desolate, bumpy B-picture as rudely popped pamphlet" and of the "aggressively" used handheld camera. At the review of the DVD edition in 2009, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung classified the film as formally courageous and surprisingly radical. The dynamic of a couple relationship between “desire and rejection, love and contempt, closeness and dependency” , which the director later carried on in the realm of the senses , is put into “enormous cadrags” .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donald Richie: Japanese cinema. An introduction. Oxford University Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-19-584950-7 , p. 66
  2. ↑ Nagisa Oshima in Seishun to dokusho from August 1969. Printed in: Nagisa Oshima: The Awareness of Freedom. Writings , Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-24483-8 , p. 126 (German first edition 1982 by Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin)
  3. ↑ a b Hubert Niogret: Nagisa Oshima, cinéaste sous contrat puis indépendant . In: Positif , October 2007, pp. 76-77
  4. ↑ a b Karlheinz Oplustil: Naked Youth . In: epd Film , October 1986, p. 30
  5. ↑ a b Fischer Film Almanach 1987, p. 192
  6. ↑ film-dienst , No. 19/1963, drawn by "Sdt."
  7. ^ Dietrich Kuhlbrodt: Naked youth . In: Filmkritik , No. 5, 1963, pp. 251-252
  8. ↑ Der Spiegel No. 37 of September 8, 1986, p. 230: Oshima's political anger
  9. ↑ Alexandra Stähli: Nuberu Bagu II , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , November 24, 2009, p. 50