Film

Cruel Story of Youth

Name: Cruel Story of Youth
Genre: Romance, Drama, Crime
Released: 1960
Cast: Yūsuke Kawazu, Miyuki Kuwano, Yoshiko Kuga, Fumio Watanabe, Shinji Tanaka

Drama
Very dark

A 1960 Japanese crime-romance about two drifters who become partners in petty robbery. Nagisa Oshima's directorial debut is visually audacious and morally unsettling, capturing postwar Tokyo's underclass with cold precision. It's for viewers who want their cinema challenging and uncomfortable, not reassuring.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love provocative New Wave cinema where restless style and a shrugging amorality matter more than redemption, and you enjoy films that refuse to console.

Skip it if you need characters to root for, because nearly everyone here is cold, careless and hard to warm to, and the chill never really lifts.

What it asks of you: Ninety-seven minutes of mostly unhurried, hard-edged scenes where mood and surface carry more weight than plot explanation.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Tokyo Story1953

Ozu's masterpiece of restraint and observation—a family gathering that unfolds with devastating emotional clarity. Essential viewing for understanding Japanese cinema's humanistic tradition.

But Its slowness and quietude demand patience. If you need plot momentum, you'll struggle with its glacial pacing.

In the Realm of the Senses1976

Nagisa Oshima's most transgressive work: a graphic, taboo-breaking love story set during wartime. Raw, fearless, and viscerally alive in ways mainstream cinema avoids.

But Explicit sexual content throughout. It's intentionally provocative and will alienate viewers seeking subtlety or conventional eroticism.

A Clockwork Orange1971

Kubrick's controversial masterpiece about youth violence and state control. Like Oshima, it refuses moral comfort and forces you to reckon with its own complicity in aestheticizing brutality.

But Deeply disturbing imagery and sexual violence. Its philosophical arguments don't soften the assault on your sensibilities.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Cruel Story of Youth

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Midnight Cowboy1969

Both depict youth commodified and survival through sexual transaction; both refuse sentimentality about their subjects' circumstances.

John Schlesinger's portrait of male prostitution in New York—raw, compassionate, and morally complex. Both films follow desperate young people surviving through their bodies and wits, but Midnight Cowboy finds humanity where Oshima finds cruelty.

But Grim and exploitative in tone, with sexual content and tragic inevitability. It's bleaker than most can comfortably bear.

Branded to Kill1967

Seijun Suzuki's surreal yakuza film—stylistically dazzling, narratively fractured, pulsing with eroticism and danger. Japanese New Wave at its most uncompromising.

But The plot is deliberately incoherent. If you need clarity or linear storytelling, you'll find it maddening.

Late Spring1949

Another Ozu gem, intimate and devastating. A meditation on duty, love, and the passage of time that cuts deeper than any melodrama.

But Ozu's style is even more austere here. Long takes, minimal camera movement, and emotional restraint may feel tedious if you're used to conventional narrative drive.

Harakiri1962

Masaki Kobayashi's masterpiece about samurai honor and systemic cruelty. Formally perfect and morally shattering—Japanese cinema at its most profound.

But The pacing is deliberately slow and the emotional weight relentless. It's not an easy watch, even when it's magnificent.

Grave of the Fireflies1988

Isao Takahata's anime about two orphans in wartime Japan. Heartbreaking and beautiful, it captures human vulnerability with devastating honesty.

But It's an animated film about child suffering. Preconceptions about animation and subject matter may prevent you from engaging with its power.

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Maggie Greenwald's tale of a woman passing as a man in the Old West—unconventional, visually striking, and genuinely strange in its approach to gender and survival.

But Deliberately unglamorous and slow-paced. It refuses the Western's typical thrills and spectacle.

Knife in the Water1962

Roman Polanski's chamber piece of psychological tension on a sailboat. Economical, claustrophobic, and endlessly readable—master class in suspense from minimal materials.

But Dialogue-heavy and deliberately confined. Some will find it talky and limited rather than intimate.

A Prophet2009

Both trace the education of a young man into criminality and power, using visual style to make that corruption almost seductive.

Jacques Audiard's portrait of a young man's transformation in prison—visually sumptuous and narratively gripping. Like Cruel Story, it charts moral corruption with unflinching intelligence and genuine beauty.

But Prison violence and casual brutality throughout. Its glamour can feel like complicity.

Contempt1963

Both examine how performance and seduction become indistinguishable from reality; both use visual style as moral argument.

Godard's metacinematic meditation on art, commerce, and desire—a seemingly simple marriage drama that becomes a labyrinth of artifice. Completely different form, but shares Oshima's obsession with how image and performance corrode authenticity.

But Deliberately self-conscious and fragmented. If you want immersion, Godard's reflexivity will keep you at distance.