was the second film directed by Nagisa Oshima

Nagisa Oshima

is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. After graduating from Kyoto University he was hired by Shochiku Ltd. and quickly progressed to directing his own movies, making his debut feature A Town of Love and Hope in 1959....

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Oshima, who was only 28 at the time, made extensive use of hand-held cameras and location shooting, and the results drew comparisons to the French nouvelle vague

French New Wave

The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...

 filmmakers emerging at around the same time; the film became one of the primary films in the Nuberu bagu.

The use of adolescent criminals as protagonists generated controversy at the time, though the film was also a commercial success, which helped to pave the way for the emergence of a young and adventurous generation of new Japanese filmmakers: in short order, Shohei Imamura

Shohei Imamura

was a Japanese film director. Imamura was the first Japanese director to win two Palme d'Or awards.His eldest son Daisuke Tengan is also a script writer and film director, and worked on the screenplays to Imamura's filmsThe Eel , Dr...

, Masahiro Shinoda

Masahiro Shinoda

is a Japanese film director, originally associated with the Shochiku Studio, who came to prominence as part of the Japanese New Wave in the 1960s.-Career:...

, Yasuzo Masumura

Yasuzo Masumura

was a Japanese film director.Masumura was born in Kōfu on Honshū. After dropping out of a law course at the University of Tokyo he worked as an assistant director at the Daiei studio, later returning to university to study philosophy; he graduated in 1949...

, Susumu Hani

Susumu Hani

is a Japanese film director, and one of the most prominent representatives of the 1960s Japanese New Wave. Born in Tokyo, he has directed both documentaries and feature films....

, Hiroshi Teshigahara and others began to attract international attention. In this film, Oshima was already beginning to explore the themes he would soon become celebrated for: a focus on youth and on 'outsiders', and critical deconstructions of more stereotypical imagery in Japanese cinema.

Cruel Story of Youth was the first of three films Oshima completed in 1960; it was followed by The Sun's Burial and Night and Fog in Japan

Night and Fog in Japan

is a 1960 film from Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. It is an intensely political film- both in subject matter and in thematic concerns such as political memory and the interpersonal dynamics of social movements.- Plot :In 1960, uninvited guests interrupt the wedding ceremony between Nozawa, a...

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Sources

• Donald Richie
  Donald Richie
  Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17...
  
  . 100 Years Of Japanese Cinema, 2003, Kodansha.
• Joan Mellen. The Waves At Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema, 1975, Pantheon.
• Tadao Sato
  Tadao Sato
  is a prominent Japanese film critic and film theorist. Satō has published more than 30 books on film, and is one of the foremost scholars and historians addressing Japanese film, though little of his work has been translated for publication abroad....
  
  . Currents In Japanese Cinema, 1982, Kodansha.