 
Fighting Elegy Criterion has devoted a large part of its catalog to the work of Japanese filmmakers, both familiar and obscure. If you’re like me and haven’t spent a great deal of time researching the latter, then the discovery of directors like Seijun Suzuki can prove not only to be a treat, but somewhat of a revelation. Youth Of The Beast and Fighting Elegy represent the kind of low budget B-movie features that were churned out for Nikkatsu studios and designed to be screened after the main attractions. Typically they were Yakuza gangster dramas or morality plays involving the lives of prostitutes, but in 1967 he was fired for making “incomprehensible movies.” Not being a scholar of Japanese cinema in the ‘60s, I don’t have much to compare him to (with the exception of Kurosawa), but these two films definitely go way over the top and often reach absurdist levels (I assume intentionally). Youth makes liberal use of color and geometric forms to offset dialog and emotions (lots of red and white – the code of honor of old-school Yazuka) and there’s plenty of good ‘ol double crossing, as a fallen cop pits two rival gangs against each other, partly to avenge the death of his former partner. Razors and guns are put to good use and our hero even manages to wipe out a few of the bad guys while hanging upside down and tied to a chandelier. Fun stuff. Fighting Elegy on the other hand is in black and white and relies on contrast for emphasis throughout, as well as some unusual split screen call and response that seem to come out of nowhere. Basically a story about testosterone in young males, it centers on Kiroku, a middle-school student who likes to brawl with others, most of who are in militaristic gangs. He lives with a Catholic family and develops a crush on their daughter, then spends a great deal of time trying to avoid his masturbatory fantasies, without having much luck. He’s forced to relocate to another prefecture, where he encounters a mysterious stranger in a bar. This man later turns out to be Kita Ikki, a fascist leader who was behind a series of political assassinations in the mid-1930’s. This is, for the most part a very funny film and from what I can gather, something of an anomaly in Suzuki’s film repertoire. It goes without saying that both DVDs have meticulous transfers and copious liner notes – a hallmark of the Criterion series. I’ll be taking a look at more classic and contemporary Japanese cinema in the future, but for anyone curious about the work of Seijun Suzuki, this is a great place to start. -- David Bassin
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Youth
Of The Beast