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The Warped Ones
(Kyonetsu no kisetsu)

Screening on Film
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara.
With Tamio Kawachi, Eiji Go, Hiroyuki Nagato.
Japan, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 75 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: National Film Archive of Japan

The game-changing experimentation of Nikkatsu taiyozoku ("Sun Tribe") films like Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit (1956) and Toshio Masuda's Perfect Game (1958) paved the way for this representative work of the studio's New Wave by Koreyoshi Kurahara. A jazz-obsessed delinquent and a reckless sex worker are released from juvenile detention and wreak havoc on everyone in their paths, including the newspaper reporter who got them arrested and his bourgeois artist fiancée. Kurahara's indelible portrait of amoral youth features striking high-contrast black-and-white compositions, bold camera movements and a propulsive jazz score, anchored by Tamio Kawachi's mesmerizingly feral performance. 

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