High and Low (1963 film)

High and Low
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay by	Ryūzō Kikushima Hideo Oguni Eijiro Hisaita Akira Kurosawa[1]
Based on	King's Ransom by Evan Hunter
Produced by	Ryūzō Kikushima Tomoyuki Tanaka
Starring	Toshiro Mifune Tatsuya Nakadai Kyōko Kagawa Tatsuya Mihashi Yutaka Sada
Cinematography	Asakazu Nakai Takao Saito[1]
Edited by	Akira Kurosawa[1]
Music by	Masaru Sato[1]
Production companies	Kurosawa Films Toho[1]
Release date	1 March 1963 (1963-03-01) (Japan)
Running time	143 minutes[1]
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Budget	¥230 million[2]
Box office	¥460.2 million[3]

High and Low (Japanese: 天国と地獄, Hepburn: Tengoku to Jigoku, literally "Heaven and Hell") is a 1963 Japanese police procedural crime film directed and edited by Akira Kurosawa and written by Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita, and Ryûzô Kikushima. The film is loosely based on the 1959 novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). It follows the story of a board member for a Japanese company who is forced to make a decision between using a vast amount of wealth to gain executive control and helping his employee by lending him the money to free his child from kidnappers.

The film stars Toshiro Mifune as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy man who puts himself into debt in a risky bid to enact a hostile takeover of National Shoes, and Tatsuya Nakadai as Inspector Tokura, the man charged with solving the kidnapping case. Filmed in Tokyo and Kanagawa, the film has been regarded as embodying a revitalised post-War Japan, particularly in anticipation of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Released in Japan on 1 March 1963, High and Low received highly positive reviews and has become highly appraised as one of Kurosawa's best films. With a budget of ¥230 million, it was the largest budget Kurosawa had worked with at the time and became the highest grossing film domestically that year. It has since been remade and reinterpreted numerous times both within Japan and internationally.

A wealthy executive named Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is in a struggle to gain control of a company called National Shoes. One faction wants the company to make cheap, low-quality shoes for the impulse market as opposed to the sturdy and high-quality shoes the company is currently known for. Gondo believes that the long-term future of the company will be best served by well-made shoes with modern styling, though this plan is unpopular because it means lower profits in the short term. He has secretly set up a leveraged buyout to gain control of the company, mortgaging all he has.

Just as he is about to put his plan into action, he receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his son, Jun. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom, but the call is dismissed as a prank when Jun comes in from playing outside. However, Jun's playmate, Shinichi, the child of Gondo's chauffeur, is missing and the kidnappers have mistakenly abducted him instead.

In another phone call, the kidnapper reveals that he has discovered his mistake but still demands the same ransom. Gondo is now forced to make a decision about whether to pay the ransom to save the child or complete the buyout. After a long night of contemplation Gondo announces that he will not pay the ransom, explaining that doing so would not only mean the loss of his position in the company, but cause him to go into debt and throw the futures of his wife and son into jeopardy. His plans are weakened when his top aide lets the "cheap shoes" faction know about the kidnapping in return for a promotion should they take over. Finally, after continuous pleading from the chauffeur and under pressure from his wife, Gondo decides to pay the ransom. Following the kidnapper's instructions, the money is put into two small briefcases and thrown out from a moving train; Shinichi is found unharmed.

Gondo is forced out of the company and his creditors demand the collateral in lieu of the debt. The story is widely reported however, making Gondo a hero, while the National Shoe Company is vilified and boycotted. Meanwhile, the police eventually find the hideout where Shinichi was kept prisoner. The bodies of the kidnapper's two accomplices are found there, killed by an overdose of heroin. The police surmise that the kidnapper engineered their deaths by supplying them with uncut drugs. Further clues lead to the identity of the kidnapper, a medical intern at a nearby hospital, but there is no hard evidence linking him to the accomplices' murders.

The police lay a trap by first planting a false story in the newspapers implying that the accomplices are still alive, and then forging a note from them demanding more drugs. The kidnapper is then apprehended in the act of trying to supply another lethal dose of uncut heroin to his accomplices, after testing the strength on a drug addict who overdoses and dies. Most of the ransom money is recovered, but too late to save Gondo's property from auction. With the kidnapper facing a death sentence, he requests to see Gondo while in prison and Gondo finally meets him face to face. Gondo has gone to work for a rival shoe company, earning less money but enjoying a free hand in running it. The kidnapper at first feigns no regrets for his actions. As he reveals that envy from seeing Gondo's house on the hill every day led him to conceive of the crime, his emotions gradually gain control over him and he ends up breaking down emotionally before Gondo after finally facing his failure.

• Kōji Mitsui as reporter
• Minoru Chiaki as reporter
• Eijirō Tōno as factory worker
• Kamatari Fujiwara as incineration worker
• Masao Shimizu as prison director
• Kyū Sazanka as creditor
• Akira Nagoya as Yamamoto
• Kō Nishimura as creditor
• Jun Hamamura as creditor
• Ikio Sawamura as trolley man
• Kin Sugai as addict
• Masao Oda as executor
• Gen Shimizu as chief physician

High and Low was filmed at Toho Studios and on location in Yokohama.^[1] Kurosawa included cameos by many of his popular stock performers, making its star-studded cast one of the film's best-remembered highlights.^[4] The film foregrounds the modern infrastructure of the economic miracle years and the run-up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, including rapid rail lines and the proliferation of personal automobiles.^[5]

Preproduction began on 20 July 1962 when Kurosawa began to cast for characters that he hadn't already planned to cast.

The story was written faithfully to McBain's novel, but contains significant differences, most especially in the ending wherein Kurosawa's ambivalent note contrasts McBain's optimistic embrace of his main character and his wealth. Unlike the novel too, Gondo does not catch the kidnapper himself.^[6] Additionally, the script originally ended with Inspector Tokura and Gondo having a conversation before Kurosawa changed his opinion in the edit.^[7]

Gondo's home overlooking Yokohama is in fact two different sets. One is filmed on location, overlooking the city. The night scenes showing the same location and view were filmed with a miniature display outside the window as the location set did not photograph the outside well enough at night. The scenes with the curtains drawn were filmed at Toho Studios.^[8] The set itself was a room with an open wall, with the camera rarely entering.

Filming began on 2 September 1962. Many of the takes shot during the film's first half were ten minutes long, and may have been longer if the capacity of the cameras' magazines were larger. The main body of the first half was filmed at Toho Studios.

The kidnapping exchange scene wherein money is dropped through the open window of a Kodama express train could only be filmed in one take due to budgetary restrictions on the reservation of the express train for a shoot. All the camermen at Toho were required to shoot the film simultaneously, which led to all other film productions being shut down for a day. While preparing for this scene, the filmmakers made numerous enquiries to Japanese National Railways; unaware of the reason for their questions one official eventually got suspicious and questioned their intentions. The train was hired and the scene was shot while the train was running along the Tōkaidō Line. Reportedly the actors rehearsed the scene on-set for a week before the one take.^[9] According to Teruyo Nogami, script supervisor on many of Kurosawa's films, claims that Kurosawa ordered the destruction of a private home because it was blocking the kidnapper actor's face are exaggerated. Instead a blue sheet was used to disguise alterations made to the second floor of a nearby building, a job conceived and executed just a day before filming took place.^[10]

During the final scene, Yamazaki Tsutomu burnt his hands on the wire mesh from the heat of the lighting. The role launched him to acting success, appearing in two more of Kurosawa's films (Red Beard, and Kagemusha) and starring in the popular 1970s jidaigeki television drama Hissatsu Shiokinin.^[11]

The film is shot using CinemaScope, a widescreen filming system. Long-distance lenses were used, particularly during the first half of the film.

The original script ending was changed when Kurosawa noted the performance of Yamazaki as especially powerful, the original final scene contained a reflective conversation between Mifune and Nakadai. Although the crew spent two weeks filming the scene, Kurosawa ultimately cut it.^[12][13]

Scored by Masaru Satō, this was the eighth film he worked on with Akira Kurosawa, the film includes stock music from The H-Man (1958), the music of which was also produced by Satō.^[14]

During the scene wherein the kidnapper is first seen by the audience, Schubert's Trout Quintet can be heard playing on the radio.^[15]

In his analysis of intertextuality, scholar and acquaintance of Kurosawa Donald Richie notes the oppositional extremity of the original title Tengoku to Jigoku, and underlines that by comparing Yokohama to Dante's Divine Comedy. In this comparison Mifune's Gondo takes on the role of Dante himself, with the head detectives fulfilling the role of the angels, demi-gods, and Virgil. He concludes that it is "the most black and white of all of Kurosawa's films because its eventual ambiguity is not one of character."^[16] He concludes in his moral analysis of the film that good and evil are made to coincide and made equal in their shared identity, that in realising themselves both Gondo and Takeuchi are offending the other. Stuart Galbraith also compares the film to Dante, noting also that while Gondo's house looks down on the people below, Kurosawa conducts a 'hell' in Yokohama "that is, in part at least, seductive."^[17] He proposes that Gondo's nouveau riche background and moral compass match Kurosawa and Mifune's own personalities.

Stephen Prince notes in his study of Kurosawa's filmography a dialectical enquiry of perspective running through the film. He underscores this by focusing on the blocking of Kurosawa's characters and the use of modern technology that works to conceal identity. The narrative bifurcation that occurs between the wealthy Gondo's home and the geographical shift down the hill into the shantytown below it during the second half structures Kurosawa's framing of characters' decisions and moral perspectives.^[18] When Gondo and the kidnapper meet in the film's final scene, "the existence and structure of class relations, is veiled, mystified to the sight of both an executive living at the heights of the society and a criminal who is aware of profoundly unequal standards of living ... It is the image of Gondo's house, not who he is personally, that triggers the crime".^[19]

Film scholar James Goodwin views the investigative narrative construct to be more directly interrogating social divisions and the nature of power on the human spirit. He compares the third act's showdown in the unrecovered slum with the sump in Drunken Angel and the bombed out factories in The Bad Sleep Well as geographic representations of the social malignancy of executive power.^[20] Gondo's heroic actions as protagonist are questioned by his intimacy with the kidnapper.

Philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote of High and Low in his work Cinema 1: The Movement Image, that the film demonstrates the situation-action paradigm in its structure. That is, the second half is a "senseless, brutal action" from the confined and theatrical space of its situational first half. To Deleuze, this movement represents an expansion of space which sees the exploration and exposition of 'heaven and hell' at the same time the Kurosawan hero crosses through that space laterally.^[21] This process of the situation-action paradigm in High and Low represents a mutual agreement across the class divide.

High and Low was released in Japan on 1 March 1963.^[1] In August of the same year it would be entered into the Venice Film Festival, being nominated for the Golden Lion although it would not see a general release in Italy for a few years afterwards. The film was released by Toho International with English subtitles in the United States on 26 November 1963.^[1][14] Debuting in Toho Cinema, New York, the film acquired a wider, though modest, distribution through Walter Reade–Sterling. It received a wider release in Europe from 1967 onwards, premiering in the UK in April and Spain in July; but not in France until 1976.^[22]

The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD on 14 October 1998 and again with updated picture and sound quality on 22 July 2008. A Blu-Ray version was released on 26 July 2011.^[23][24]

The BFI released a DVD of the film on 28 March 2005.

Upon release in the United States, some critics questioned whether investigative techniques such as handwriting profiling and voiceprint analysis were possible in Japan at the time.^[25]

The film was a box office success in Japan, garnering ¥460.2 million in ticket sales and becoming the highest grossing domestic film that year.^[9][26] The film was re-released in the USA in 2002 as part of the Kurosawa & Mifune festival; a multi-title release that in total accrued $561,692.^[27]

Contemporary reviews of the film achieved a generally positive consensus. Most American reviewers found the formal style captivating but did not think the source content was worthy of the art. The New York Times declared it to be "one of the best detecting thrillers ever filmed," going on to commend the performance of Mifune and Nakadai and finally commenting, "Mr. Kurosawa has composed a remarkable movie mosaic, both spine-tingling and compassionate".^[28] The Washington Post wrote that "High and Low is, in a way, the companion piece to Throne of Blood – it's Macbeth, if Macbeth had married better. The movie shares the rigors of Shakespeare's construction, the symbolic and historical sweep, the pacing that makes the story expand organically in the mind".^[29] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic after questioning why Kurosawa wanted to make High and Low, wrote "To say all this is not, I hope, to discourage the reader from seeing this film. Very much the reverse. Two hours and twenty three minutes of fine entertainment are not a commonplace achievement. Also, from the opening frame (literally) to the last, Kurosawa never makes the smallest misstep nor permits it in anyone else".^[30]

Scott Tobias of The AV Club commented on the film's split nature, seeing it as split in half between the indoor tension of negotiation at the beginning, and the race-against-time of the investigation to find the kidnapper. He praises Kurosawa for turning the "mundane follow-through of police work into the stuff of white-knuckle suspense."

David Parkinson writing for Empire in 2006 gave it four out of five stars, commenting on the film's use of "deceptive appearance" to illustrate that "all men are essentially equal and the only thing that really separates them are the choices they make in the depths of a crisis."^[31]

Martin Scorsese included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker."^[32]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, High and Low has an approval rating of 96% based on 24 reviews, with an average score of 8/10.^[33] In 2009 the film was voted at No. 13 on the list of The Greatest Japanese Films of All Time by Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo.^[34]

The film is consistently ranked among Kurosawa's greatest works despite failing to achieve the same level of notoriety as Rashomon or Seven Samurai. Film scholar Audie Bock appraised High and Low as the last of Kurosawa's transcendent humanistic dramas, believing his subsequent films to lack the same moral power.^[35]

When asked in 1975 whether it was correct to view the film as being anti-capitalist, Kurosawa responded:

"Well, I did not want to say so formally. I always have many issues about which I am angry, including capitalism. Although I don't intend explicitly to put my feelings and principles into films, these angers slowly seep through. They naturally penetrate my filmmaking."^[36]

Reportedly after the film's release, the number of kidnappings in Japan increased slightly. Kurosawa, in emphasising the lenient sentencing of Japanese kidnapping law, had intended to inspire tougher sentences; but was instead blamed for their increase.^[37] High and Low is said to have been partially responsible for reform of the Penal Code in 1964.^[38]

The Indian film Inkaar (1977) has been described as a Bollywood reproduction of the film.^[39]

The film was adapted for Japanese TV in 2007 by Yasuo Tsuruhashi.

The story for the 2023 miniseries Full Circle was inspired by High and Low.^[40]

Apple Original Films announced on 8th February 2024, via X, that Spike Lee will be directing a reinterpretation, with Denzel Washington starring, in collaboration with A24. Filming starts in March of the same year.^[41]

Venice Film Festival (1964)

• Nominated – Golden Lion – Akira Kurosawa

Mainichi Film Award (1963)

• Winner – Best Film
• Winner – Best Screenplay – Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryûzô Kikushima

Golden Globe Awards (1964)

• Nominated – Best Foreign Film^[42]

• High and Low (in Japanese) at the Japanese Movie Database
• High and Low at IMDb
• High and Low at the TCM Movie Database
• High and Low at AllMovie
• High and Low at Box Office Mojo
• High and Low at Rotten Tomatoes
• High and Low an essay by Chuck Stephens at the Criterion Collection
• High and Low: Between Heaven and Hell an essay by Geoffrey O'Brien at the Criterion Collection