Last in the series—and least only in age—is Nagisa Oshima: the audacious youngster who pushed the formal and social limits of existing Japanese cinema to the point of utter rejection. He challenged audiences with attacks on every kind of zeitgeist, rebelled against whatever dogma he could identify, and made colourful, wide-screen films that simultaneously reflected and bequeathed the changing social atmosphere of the early 1960s.

These traits are all readily found in his Cruel Story of Youth (1960); with a narrative revolving around a pair of outcasts partaking in questionable activities in even seedier turf, the film manages to deconstruct and interrogate social norms while retaining a vibrant, energetic, provocative tone. It practically defines the Nuberu bagu—Japan's New Wave—and thus stands as a definitive work in the nation's already crowded list of genuinely outstanding movies.

Nagisa Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth did more than any other movie to establish the notion of a Japanese new wave. On its home ground, the director's third feature must have seemed like a local Rebel Without a Cause—it's set in a student milieu, populated by teenage gangs, and driven by adolescent risk-taking. As filmmaking, this wide-screen, candy-colored extravaganza is directed with considerable brio and filled with bold metaphors. Oshima splatters his title credits on a newspaper and films a scene against an actual student demonstration. His alienated antihero pushes the provocative antiheroine into polluted water as a prelude to satisfying her sexual curiosity. (Later, they celebrate their love by riding a stolen motorbike into the ocean.) J. Hoberman, 1999, Village Voice