Danderous Youth-Genres & Themes-國家電影及視聽文化中心 Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute

危險的青春
Danderous Youth

Directed : 辛奇 HSIN Chi

Opening : 2021-11-22 00:00:00 ~ 2028-12-31 23:55:00

Year : 1969

Color : 黑白

Length : 01:34:18

Production: Taiwan

Introduction

Khue-Guan, a deliveryman living in a cheap apartment, dreams of making it big one day. He happens upon a teenage runaway, Tsing-Bi, and entices her to work in a nightclub to make money for him. Meanwhile, the nightclub hostess, Giok-Sian, pays for Khue-Guan's company but keeps a no strings attached relationship. When Tsing-Bi becomes pregnant with Khue-Guan's child, she asks him to marry her but is coldly rejected. Khue-Guan proposes to Giok-Sian only to be sneered at. In the choice between love and money, Khue-Guan must decide what he truly wants.

Dangerous Youth (1969) is perhaps the most avant-garde and piercing Taiwanese language film that exists today. Through the relationships between a prostitute, a pimp and a procuress, the film presents a capitalist society in moral decay: People are selling their bodies, buying sexual pleasure, and no one is "the good guy" in the traditional sense. The image of speeding motorcycles recurring throughout the film come to symbolize the dangerous, derailing of youth. With its unapologetic depiction of physical desires coupled with New Wave aesthetics, Dangerous Youth is a classic of Taiwanese cinema.

Director's Profile

Born in 1924, HSIN found his love for movies, literature and plays at a young age. After studying theater at Nihon University in Japan, he returned to Taiwan and became active in the theater movement. Though he temporarily left Taiwan following the February 28 Incident, he again returned as Taiwanese-language films were on the rise, during which he began to explore filmmaking. He organized actors’ workshops and became a screenwriter and director interested in experimenting with different subjects, styles and techniques. His most notable Taiwanese-language films include the baseball film Kiss Me (1963), Alias Lover (1965) based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a disaster film, The Night of Jiayi Earthquake (1964), and Back Street Life (1965), a satirical comedy about low lifes. Eight of HSIN’s Taiwanese-language films exist today and are currently preserved in Taiwan Film Institute.