The film: Seen as a turning point in both Japanese cinema and literature, Shintaro Ishihara's Sun Tribe novels and screenplays were considered a serious threat to traditional society in the 1950s. Depicting a rebellious, bored, disaffected youth with too much time and money on their hands, the genre was best represented on film by Ko Nakahira's recently rediscovered Crazed Fruit, released last week by Criterion.

Now seen as a seminal work of the Japanese New Wave, it tells the story of two brothers who fall for the same girl.

The elder of the two discovers that she is married to a middle-aged American expat, and perhaps because of this, becomes obsessed, while the younger is simply in love with what he thinks is an innocent schoolgirl. While its violent climax is quite shocking, the main body of the film is mostly notable for being an interesting document of the early days of Japanese juvenile delinquency and the first mainstream representation of overt sexuality in Japanese film.

The girl-chasing gang to which the brothers belong drives around in a British MG sports car, goes waterskiing by day and visits western nightclubs and funfairs by night. Although made a few years after the US occupation ended, the background is still liberally peppered with western faces (a Nikkatsu Studios trademark at the time) and English-language signs, and even the Hawaiian-shirt wearing, ukulele-playing boys throw in a few English phrases.

Director Nakahira had his wings clipped by Nikkatsu Studios after this much-criticised release and drifted into obscurity. He ended up in Hong Kong working for Shaw Brothers from 1967,where he directed under the name Yang Shu-hsi. In 1968 he remade Crazed Fruit - almost shot for shot and line for line - as Summer Heat (also available on DVD), with Eurasian actress Jenny Hu. Oddly enough, one-time controversial Sun Tribe author and screenwriter Ishihara is now the very conservative Mayor of Tokyo.

The extras: Criterion has wheeled out Japan film scholar Donald Richie for a commentary on this new release. While almost peerless in his field, Richie is getting on in years (he was at the original press screening), and makes several minor but obvious errors, for example confusing the screenwriter and the main actor, who were brothers. Still, it's a treat to have a learned commentary on such a little-known film. There's also a 16-page booklet containing two long essays that fill in a few of the gaps left by Richie, and the original theatrical trailer.

Being a low-budget film, Crazed Fruit was not made in widescreen, so the DVD transfer is non-anamorphic, but very clean nonetheless.