Film appreciation: Chor Yuen's The Youth (1969) - campy verve, surreal script

Hong Kong's once flourishing Cantonese-dialect film industry was in dire straits when (1969) was released. It was hoped this provocative exposé might turn the tide.

The 1960s had begun with an annual output of more than 200 features, but that number would dwindle to zero by the early 1970s.

Although did little to reverse the trend, it presents today's viewers with a vibrant snapshot of an industry fighting to remain relevant in the face of its base audience's defection to locally made Putonghua-language pictures and imports from Taiwan, Hollywood and Japan.

Although only 34 at the time, director-writer Chor Yuen was already a respected veteran with more than 60 credits when he attempted .

He was influenced by French New Wave techniques and plot machinations borrowed from . Unlike James Dean and his high school cohorts, 's protagonists are older students attending an elite university populated with an array of characters who couldn't be less academic.

The movie contains no classrooms or books but instead spotlights the pupils' descent into a lurid world of drugs, prostitution, rape, blackmail, suicide and murder. Adding to the surreal mixture is the script's perfunctory nod to mainstream morality by imbuing the proceedings with undercurrents of Christian redemption and religious symbolism, foreshadowing John Woo's .