1963 ‘天国と地獄’ Directed by Akira Kurosawa
An executive of a shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped and held for ransom.
Toshirō Mifune Tatsuya Nakadai Kyōko Kagawa Tatsuya Mihashi Isao Kimura Kenjirō Ishiyama Takeshi Katō Takashi Shimura Jun Tazaki Nobuo Nakamura Yūnosuke Itō Tsutomu Yamazaki Minoru Chiaki Eijirō Tōno Masao Shimizu Yutaka Sada Masahiko Shimazu Toshio Egi Kōji Mitsui Kyū Sazanka Susumu Fujita Kamatari Fujiwara Yoshio Tsuchiya Kazuo Kitamura Gen Shimizu Akira Nagoya Jun Hamamura Masao Oda Kō Nishimura Show All…
El cielo y el infierno, Céu e o Inferno, Himmel og helvede, Taivas ja helvetti, Entre le ciel et l'enfer, Рай и ад, 天堂与地狱, El infierno del odio, Menny és pokol, The Ransom, O dolofonos tou Tokyo, Cielo e infierno, Heaven and Hell, Između neba i zemlje, Nebo a peklo, Anatomia di un rapimento, Himmel och helvete, Niebo i piekło, Tengoku to jigoku, 天國與地獄, 천국과 지옥
Thrillers and murder mysteries Crime, drugs and gangsters cops, murder, thriller, detective or crime film noir, femme fatale, 1940s, thriller or intriguing drugs, violence, crime, gritty or cops terrorism, thriller, gripping, intense or political mystery, murder, detective, murderer or clues Show All…
everytime i watch a kurosawa movie i haven’t seen i’m all like “okay this is the best one” but this time i MEAN IT
Leave it to Kurosawa to make an hour of listing evidence and clues exciting.
High and Low is tight, tense, and engaging, but what makes it so great for me is that Kurosawa (based on the book King's Ransom by Ed McBain) uses an almost Dante-like structuring of the three points of view by which this story is told. Each act is a discrete and self-contained plot with its own beginning, middle, and end, which make High and Low more of a crime anthology than an epic. Still, all the main characters appear (physically or vocally) in all three stories, tying them together and leaving room for an epilogue which unites the circuitous narrative. In addition, the class-warfare analogies really…
Had the pleasure of watching this film for the first time on 35mm thanks to The Cinematheque in Vancouver. It was the first film in the series High Art Films Made from Pop Art Sources curated by Donald Brackett. Brackett intro'd the film.
Great film by a great master. Incredibly tight Tohoscope framing which should be studied for how to frame groups of characters in a 2.35 frame.
trivia: Pulp Fiction's "Swing Dance Scene" was inspired by the incredible real time dance scene in the last act of High and Low.
Watched on 35mm at Vancouver's Cinematheque
A masterpiece of Noir/police procedural that spares not a single detail. This movie is part of a lineage of painstaking procedurals about the investigation of a crime that become a forensic examination of the society in which they occur. It goes M--->High and Low--->The Boston Strangler--->Memories of Murder--->Zodiac.
The first 50 minutes of this takes places entirely in a guy's living room and just with how he composes people in space--entering a room, getting up, sitting down--Kurosawa shows you absolutely everything you need to know about feel about the action thats taking place. Masterclass, tears in my eyes.
92/100
Complicated history with this one, as the first time I saw it (at a tender age, shortly after starting NYU film school) I jumped to a completely false conclusion about what was going on, then proceeded to construct the foundation for my magnum opus The Ruse using the alternate version I'd imagined. Made it hard for me to see the film for what it is, obviously, and on top of that I think I was simply too green back then not to be thrown by the formal gambit of the slow descent—pretty sure I got all huffy about Mifune's apparent protagonist having been abandoned for what idiotically struck me as rote detective work. What can I say, I was…
Alfred Hitchcock: I make the best one-location films
Bong Joon-Ho: In my films, I masterfully tackle the social and economical gap in the society
David Fincher: I make the best crime dramas
Legend Akira Kurosawa (with sunglasses on and a thick American Matthew McConaughey accent) : Alright, Alright, Alright
I'm too sleepy to go into all the myriad reasons this is one of the greatest movies of all time. Kurosawa's filmmaking is so transcendent it seems weak to say it's "ahead of its time," and yet that's exactly what it is in scenes like the final one, with both characters being alternately seen through their reflections, sharing the same space, never really separate. The claustrophobic and almost unbearably tense first act, the incredibly immediate train sequence, the detailed and gripping investigation, the slow descent into the expressionistic and heartbreaking "hell" of the city's poor neighborhoods, the pink smoke...! I know he made more masterpieces than practically anybody else but why this isn't widely considered Kurosawa's best I haven't a clue.
Weirdly enough, the world of High and Low contains fundamentally good people. There is an evil criminal and heartless businessmen, but when things get tough, the people do the right thing. High and Low is rarely subtle in its class allusions, but it gives us sympathy for the wealthy lead, even after painting him callously when we realise the monetary value he initially places on the lives of different children. This is a film of affluence and poverty, of hierarchical systems within society (like the poor man tough on his child but meek when facing his boss). If a rich man exists, there must exist those who are poorer.
The first hour of High and Low takes place virtually in…
Empty apartment, gf away for the evening, I did what any red-blooded man would do: went to the Criterion Channel and threw on a 2+ hour blindspot from canon. It had been a few years since I last checked in with Akira Kurosawa, a director so overwhelmingly canonical that it can be easy to take him for granted. But I say to you and myself: he really is that good. Look at how this man could compose and choreograph a 2.35:1 frame. Look at the multitude of visual strategies he uses to communicate nuances of his story, settings and characters. Look at how Mifune's face reflects on the glass in the last scene. Stop the presses -we're dealing with a…
Digs compassion out from under an avalanche of detail. Social stratification enables capital enables social stratification.
