A Town of Love and Hope

Early Oshima is forever being compared with early Godard, but this debut feature (exactly contemporary with Breathless) shows that Oshima's political acumen was a great deal stronger than Godard's at this time. A schoolboy lives in a slum with his widowed mother and infant sister; his sole income derives from selling (and reselling) his sister's pigeons, which invariably escape from their buyers and fly home. This 'fraud' is eventually discovered, and the boy angrily accepts society's verdict that he is a 'criminal'. Oshima defines poverty in explicit terms of class oppression, and celebrates the boy's anger and pride. Along the way, he demolishes various liberal stances, and gives Japan's ruling class several short, sharp shocks. The film is rather schematic, not much flesh on its bones, but none the less powerful for that.