High and Low

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天国と地獄 High and Low
Original Japanese poster
Directed by	Akira Kurosawa
Produced by	Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa Tomoyuki Tanaka
Written by	Eijirô Hisaita Evan Hunter (novel King's Ransom) Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa Hideo Oguni
Starring	Toshirô Mifune Tatsuya Nakadai Kyôko Kagawa
Music by	Masaru Satô
Distributed by	Toho Company Ltd. The Criterion Collection
Release date(s)	1 March 1963 26 November 1963
Running time	143 min.
Language	Japanese
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

High and Low is also the title of a lithograph by Dutch artist M. C. Escher and a 1933 film by G. W. Pabst

High and Low (Japanese: 天国と地獄, Tengoku to jigoku, literally "Heaven and Hell") is a 1963 film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was loosely based on King's Ransom, an 87th Precinct police procedural by Evan Hunter (written under the pseudonym Ed McBain).

High and Low is remarkable, in part, because it very clearly illustrates the divide between the rich and the poor in 1960s-era Japan.

It is filmed entirely in black and white apart from a few seconds when a cloud of pink smoke billows up from the city. As in other Kurosawa films, the director uses an imaginative score to maintain viewer attention, but also makes inventive use of sound to advance the plot and contribute to the mood of a scene.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

High and Low is a play in two acts, clearly distinct from one another in directorial style, lighting and composition.^{[citation needed]} The first act tells of an executive named Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) who mortgages all he has to stage a leveraged buyout and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of its other executives. Gondo disagrees with the executives over the direction of the company. One faction wants to make the company a modern mass market low quality manufacturer while the founder of the company tries to keep it conservative with good quality. Gondo believes he can split the difference by making high quality modern shoes. Then he learns that his son has been kidnapped. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom, until he learns that the kidnappers have mistakenly abducted the child of Gondo's chauffeur, instead of his own son. The kidnapping occurs in parallel with the corporate buyout drama and Gondo is forced to make an immediate decision about whether to pay the ransom or complete the buyout. His position is exposed to the other executives when his top aide betrays him to protect his own position. Finally, after a long night of contemplation and pressure from his wife and the chauffeur, Gondo decides to pay the ransom. This decision essentially seals his fate as the other executives now have the power to vote him out of this directorship. Interestingly, this move ends up making Gondo into a national hero while the National Shoe Company is vilified and boycotted.

The second act follows police procedure as they put together clues to find the kidnapped child, the ransom money, and the kidnapper. The director ventures into the world of the kidnappers, the detectives, and the lower classes. In this world, the heroes and villains alike have little understanding of Gondo's own personal struggles, merely what is staged for public viewing. In this act Kurosawa uses a more conventional noir directorial style, but without the moral ambiguity one would expect from film noir.^{[citation needed]} The characters have chosen their paths, and though one might empathise for a moment, there are no true antiheroes to be found.

[edit] Main cast

Toshirô Mifune - Kingo Gondo
Tatsuya Nakadai - Chief Detective Tokura
Kyôko Kagawa - Reiko Gondo
Tatsuya Mihashi - Kawanishi, Gondo's secretary
Isao Kimura - Detective Arai
Kenjiro Ishiyama - Chief Detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi
Takeshi Katô - Detective Nakao
Takashi Shimura - Chief of Investigation Section

[edit] External links

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Japanese Cinema
Films by Akira Kurosawa
1940s	Sanshiro Sugata \| The Most Beautiful \| Sanshiro Sugata Part II \| The Men Who Tread On the Tiger's Tail \| Those Who Make Tomorrow \| No Regrets for Our Youth \| One Wonderful Sunday \| Drunken Angel \| The Quiet Duel \| Stray Dog
1950s	Scandal \| Rashomon \| The Idiot \| Ikiru \| Seven Samurai \| I Live in Fear \| The Throne of Blood \| The Lower Depths \| The Hidden Fortress
1960s	The Bad Sleep Well \| Yojimbo \| Sanjuro \| High and Low \| Red Beard
1970s	Dodesukaden \| Dersu Uzala
1980s	Kagemusha \| Ran
1990s	Dreams \| Rhapsody in August \| Madadayo