“More ideas in the ten first minutes than other films have over the entire running.“ has become somewhat of a cliché, sadly, but it can still be true. “Youth of the Beast“ is one of these movies. It’s full of little twists and turns, both stylistically and narratively, but it’s never mannered. The first three minutes or so are in black-and-white, except for a tinted flower, until it suddenly switches to colour and never looks back. And that’s just the beginning.
Director Seijun Suzuki made his first film in 1956. He went on to direct some 60 films over the course of 11 years. “Youth of the Beast“ was his 28th picture. By then the beautiful cracks had started to show. Suzuki worked for the Nikkatsu studio, who assigned him a script and actors and then told him to go. He mostly did crime and pseudo-Noir films – great movies with titles like “Man with a Shotgun“, “Take Aim at the Police Van“ or simply “Everything Goes Wrong“.
His style grew more and more bizarre, or surreal, or maybe even French. There’s Godard in “Youth of the Beast“, there’s Truffaut in “Branded to Kill“. These movies are not parodies or deconstructions. They are what they are while at the same time totally being not what they are, which in a way only reinforces the first part. And vice versa. Or put more simply: “Youth of the Beast“ is the kind of movie where a gangster with glasses talks lovingly about the knife in his hand and then wipes it clean with the cat he has hanging over his shoulder.
The star of the movie is Joe Shishido, which means that the real stars are his cheeks. To kickstart his career he had silicone injected into them in the late 50s. So he always looks like he’d just been beaten up, or is storing nuts in his jowl because winter is coming, or like he has radiculitis. It’s glorious – up there with Anne Hathaway’s nose or Robert Mitchum’s eyelids when it comes to wonderfully idiosyncratic face parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biHfs0-GwRQ