Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows FanStore News Showtimes

Crazed Fruit

Play trailer Poster for Crazed Fruit 1956 1h 26m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
100% Tomatometer 6 Reviews 82% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
Two brothers fall for the same beautiful girl, whose charm and looks may hide more than they bargained for.

Critics Reviews

View All (6) Critics Reviews
Michael Atkinson Village Voice The deep hurt and despair of the climactic passage, set against a milieu of unrelenting leisure, sun, and affluence, is still stunning. Mar 5, 2013 Full Review Chris Barsanti Slant Magazine A troubled-youth movie that doesn't waste too much time trying to shock. Rated: 3/4 Jun 20, 2005 Full Review Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews A delicious treat. Rated: A Apr 1, 2011 Full Review James Kendrick Q Network Film Desk Crazed Fruit was like nothing anyone in Japan had seen before, at least from one their own. If the film doesn't seem quite so groundbreaking today, it is only because its style and themes have been driven into the ground by countless others. Rated: 3/5 Aug 7, 2005 Full Review Jake Euker Filmcritic.com Captures a mood convincingly -- and, in cinematic terms, appropriately -- and it plugged into a cultural zeitgeist that bore it up and away. Rated: 3.5/5 Jul 25, 2005 Full Review Bill Gibron DVDTalk.com Without a doubt, Crazed Fruit is a lost masterpiece of early Japanese filmmaking. Rated: 5/5 Jul 7, 2005 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (48) audience reviews
dave s When a pair of brothers, one young and immature, the other considerably more worldly, fall for the same woman, who happens to be married, matters spiral out of control, ultimately ending in tragedy. Ko Nakahira's Crazed Fruit, set in post-WW2 Japan, is the story of youth rejecting traditional Japanese values in favor of a more liberal lifestyle comprised of hedonistic pleasures. While not without its faults (the music score often feels like it would be more suited to a Hawai'ian luau and some scenes run much longer than necessary), Crazed Fruit often feels like a highly-stylized take on Rebel Without a Cause, released a year earlier, filled with frustrated youth seeking out some way of expressing their distaste of the establishment. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review william d For the first half of the movie I thought, "Apparently 1950s American cinema did not corner the market on movies about spoiled young hipsters, the Japanese did it too." Then the movie took a nice dark turn as two brothers compete for the same woman. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member What a fascinating film this is. Elements of it surprised me for 1956, and in particular for a Japanese movie. It seems to me a forerunner of the French New Wave, and that this archetypal 'Sun Tribe' effort represents an even bigger departure from traditional Japanese cinema at the time than those films would be to the French. No wonder François Truffaut was such a fan of it. The story is straightforward - two brothers fall for the same woman - but this is a film about tone, and context. Everything about it screams post-war, disaffected youth. A group of young men are bored, critical of traditional ways, and looking for good times - and young ladies. The younger of the two brothers (Masahiko Tsugawa) has an innocence about him, and falls for a pretty woman (Mie Kitahara) without realizing she's already married. The drama deepens when his older brother (Yujiro Ishihara) begins putting the moves on her behind his back. The openness with which Kitahara's sexuality is displayed is a little shocking, though there is a grace to it, and it's refreshing to see. She deceives her American husband, and enjoys being the center of attention at a party. With the younger brother she needs to provide encouragement for him to make love to her, in one scene moving his hands up on to her breast. With the older brother, she gives way to his forceful overtures, even after saying 'no' initially. If that sort of thing is a trigger to you, you may want to avoid this one, as it also has the young men competing early on to see who can bring the hottest girl to a party, and other testosterone-fueled chatter. In general, the characters are hard to like, which may also be a turn-off. On the other hand, that's part of the point, and the film shows a reckless and sexually carefree youth in ways that are less inhibited than Hollywood at the time. All of the principal actors turn in solid performances, and Masumi Okada is quite debonair in a supporting role. Mie Kitahara is quite pretty, and it's interesting that she would marry Ishihara, the actor who plays the older brother, just four years later. There is a little unevenness in the shots director Kô Nakahira captures - some are just beautiful, while others seem low-budget - but it's an impressive first film, and all the more so as it was a few years ahead of the French New Wave (e.g. Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958), Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959), Godard's Breathless (1960), etc). It seems to me the film ought to be better known. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review s r Japanese rebelious teenagers trying to figure out things and brothers competing for attention. I got a little fed up with the motivations, but this is certainly something unlike anything else. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Brilliant and seminal. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/12/23 Full Review Audience Member Excellent debut film by Ko Nakahira. Crazed Fruit is a tale of young love and lust that garnered a lot of attention for its negative portrayal of contemporary youth. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Crazed Fruit

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis Two brothers fall for the same beautiful girl, whose charm and looks may hide more than they bargained for.
Director
Ko Nakahira
Producer
Takiko Mizunoe
Screenwriter
Shintarô Ishihara, Shintarô Ishihara
Production Co
Nikkatsu Corporation
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Japanese
Release Date (DVD)
Jun 28, 2005
Runtime
1h 26m