15 research outputs found
The limits of fiction: politics and absent scenes in Susumu Hani’s Bad Boys (Furyōshōnen, 1960). A film re-reading through its script
This text proposes an updated analysis of Susumu Hani’s Bad
Boys (1960) through the director’s theoretical contribution and
the re-reading of his script. This film, made within the limits of
reality and fiction, was instrumental in the cinematic language
of the sixties in Japan. Hani implemented herein a style that he
developed during his earlier decade as a documentary maker
for Iwanami Eiga studios. Hani based his filmmaking method on
a philosophical pragmatism extracted from the practices of an
amateur writing called seikatsu kiroku (life document) that
appeared in the early 1950s. In fact, Bad Boys is a loose
adaptation of Tobenai Tsubasa (Wings that Cannot Fly) an
example of seikatsu kiroku consisting of a compilation of
experiences written by inmates from the Kurihama reformatory.
Hani responded to the demands for a new realism of the time
with this film, which he made collectively with the former
inmates of that reformatory. Additionally, a close analysis of the
script reveals significant ‘absent scenes’ of student
demonstrations, which are similar to those Oshima and Yoshida
used in 1960. This fact evidences Hani’s shared concern with
other filmmakers of the time about the necessities of bringing
cinema closer to topical issues