Boy (1969 film)

Boy , Shnen? is a 1969 Japanese film directed by Nagisa Oshima, starring Tetsuo Abe, Akiko Koyama and Fumio Watanabe.

Upon reading about the real criminal family in 1966, director Nagisa Oshima, attracted to the themes of youth and crime, within ten days had assembled a team to construct a film. Not until 1968 did a production company agree to fund the completed screenplay. In September, theperson crew began a mobile sequential onlocation shoot described by Oshima as cashstrapped and reliant on personal connections to complete, but marked by camaraderie and high spirits. The role of the boy was cast by searching in Tokyo childrens homes, eventually finding the young orphan Tetsuo Abe. Abes own life resembled the fractured childhood of the character he was to play, and he was allowed to join the production with the homes permission. Abe developed warm relationships with cast and crew, who tutored him while the film was being shot.Although popular at the box office, Boy disappointed some critics, who faulted its perceived humanism as a backward step from previous efforts like Death By Hanging and Violence at Noon that engaged with psychoanalysis and Brechtian effects. Poststructuralist film scholar Maureen Turim disputes this characterization, arguing for a continuation of Oshimas theme of split subjectivity. The titular boy is between father and mother, knowing and notknowing, and paralyzed by fear of abandonment. The fantasy and the psyche figure prominently in the film, both in the boys relationship to family, and in cinematic techniques like the use of the color red as a focal point suggesting the mother and loss. ........

Source: Wikipedia