How the hell did the cinema dynamite that is Wolves, Pigs And Men stay hidden in 1964? It brims with an intensity of craft far ahead of its time, the equivalent of a cave painting of a fighter plane. There is also Fukasaku’s shattering of cinema’s traditional binary separation of good and evil. There are no true heroes here, though the audience will sympathize with some villains more than others. Everyone is wrong, and no one has a chance, like a much grislier variation on noir whose nihilism was fed by the atomic bomb. Even Takakura’s killer black sunglasses radiate with a contemporary power.
I cannot place another picture from this period of the 60s that is as extreme in its depiction of film violence, not even the Italians. The angles and editing create a gruesome architecture for the unrelenting brutality. There is a rape during a torture scene that is truly horrifying in the way that it is cut and shot. Instead of a complete cutaway, the audience is brought into the violation much closer than a camera has gone, with the consequences oozing like fresh wounds. Even in this bloody new century, Fukasaku’s arrangement of acts of violence makes you cringe like a giant clothespin.
“Fukasaku’s shattering of cinema’s traditional binary separation of good and evil.”
One atrocity that has festered to the point of a new deal breaker is the roasting and eating of a dog by the youth gang. The imagery of the teens chasing strays through the garbage dumps is still effective as a symbol of extreme poverty but is truly sickening years later. That this ungodly act is immediately followed by a teen dance number like a beach party movie is one of the reasons why this movie is truly sick of perfection before perfect was born.
Wolves, Pigs And Men is essential viewing by anyone like myself that thought they knew something about movies but had missed this picture. Turns out I have been watching sunrises while missing the sun. A great example as to why the gangster pictures are cinema’s richest breeding grounds of art.
"…truly sick perfection before perfect was born."
