Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Although Akira Kurusawa is best known for his samurai films, he also made some fine crime films. If his epic films are his symphonies then the crime films are his chamber pieces. What they lack in grand panoramic vistas, they make up for with intimate character portrayals and taut drama. One of Kurosawa's finest crime films is this one, called Tengoku to jigoku, in Japanese, or High and Low, in America.
Historical Background:High and Low (1963) is a film about paradoxes and opposites and was made by a man who embodied both paradox and opposites. He represented a kind of nexus between the polar opposites of East and West, long before Japan had become the Asian bastion of capitalism that it is today. Kurosawa had a love for Western cinema, imitating its forms, such as westerns and film noir, and, later, the complement was returned, when Hollywood took to borrowing from Kurosawa. Kurosawa adapted such quintessential Western materials as Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear, Dostoevsky's The Idiot, and Gorky's The Lower Depths. Elements of the style of American westerns are readily apparent in The Seven Samurai (1954), Yojimbo (1961), and Sanjuro (1962). Films like Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), and the present one, High and Low (1963), on the other hand, show the influence of American detective stories and film noir. For its part, Hollywood remade Yojimbo twice – once as the western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), starring Clint Eastwood, and later as the crime story, Last Man Standing (1966), starring Bruce Willis. George Lucas borrowed ideas from The Hidden Fortress (1958) for the original Star Wars film. Kurosawa was often reviled in Japan for allowing himself to be influenced by Western culture, but Kurosawa was, in fact, frequently critical in his films of crass American influences on traditional Japanese culture and values. So, the paradox is that Kurosawa, the most Westernized of Japanese filmmakers of his generation, was anything but glib about the trend toward Americanization in Japan. Certainly, Kurosawa's concern with the conflict between cutthroat business practices and traditional Japanese ethics is highly evident in High and Low.
The Story: The film opens in the living room of Kingo Gondo (Toshirô Mifune), a wealthy executive for National Shoes of Japan. Three of his business associates have showed up to enlist his aid in an effort to oust the company's current president, who, they believe, is too old-fashioned and behind the times. The insurgents include the Publicity Director Kamiya (Jun Tazaki), the Design Department Director Ishimaru (Nobuo Nakamura), and another executive (Yûnosuke Itô). Also at the meeting is Gondo's secretary, Kawanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi). The three rebellious executives want the company to start making less expensive, trendier shoes of low quality. Gondo agrees that the company needs to start marketing more fashionable shoes, but, as an old shoemaker himself, is committed to making shoes of quality and durability. Besides, he's got plans of his own that don't include his three associates.
Having anticipated the machinations of his colleagues, Gondo has been secretly augmenting his shares in the company. He now holds 28% and has all but closed a deal to buy up another 19%. The three upstart executives hold only 21%. Even combined with the old president's 25%, they'd be unable to prevent Gondo from gaining control of the company. Gondo sends them packing, not even personally showing them to the door, much to the surprise of his wife, Reiko (Kyôko Kagawa), who, not being a businesswoman, still adheres to the traditional Japanese customs. Reiko chastens her husband, asking, "What good is success if you lose your humanity? Gondo advises his secretary, Kawanishi, to prepare to fly to Osaka at 10 PM that evening. He'll be carrying the down payment on the additional shares.
The quality of Gondo's humanity is about to be put to the test in a manner that neither he nor Reiko could have anticipated. Before Kawanishi can leave for the airport, a phone call arrives, informing Gondo that his son, Jun, has been kidnapped and demanding 30 million yen in ransom. Gondo is fully prepared to pay the ransom but shortly after the call, Jun suddenly shows up in their living room. He had been outside playing sheriff and outlaw with the chauffeur's son, Shinichi. Gondo and Reiko are relieved beyond words – until they realize that Shinichi is missing instead. The chauffeur, Aoki, a widower with only the one child, is devastated. Gondo calls the police because, as he says, a chauffeur cannot afford a ransom.
A team of policemen arrives discretely, sneaking up to the household in a vehicle disguised as a department store delivery truck. The officer in charge is Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai). There's a rather fearsome looking bald detective, Bos'n Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama), and two younger detectives, Arai (Isao Kimura) and Nakao (Takeshi Katô). They set up the usual phone tap and tracing equipment, just in time for the kidnapper's next call. The kidnapper has realized his mistake in kidnapping the wrong child but demands that Gondo pay the ransom anyway. He allows Shinichi to speak into the phone for a few seconds. Gondo declares the ransom demand absurd, it not even being his child. Before hanging up, the kidnapper agrees that it is absurd but he's also confident that Gondo will not simply let the boy die.
Gondo has been presented with a Solomon-like choice. If he pays the kidnapper the 30 million yen, he'll be unable to gain control of National Shoe and will be ousted instead. He's mortgaged his house and put everything he has into the takeover effort. He and Reiko would have to start all over, in relative poverty. If he doesn't pay, Shinichi will probably be killed. Now ask yourself, for how many of your friends or relatives would you give up every bit of property you own to pay a ransom for their child? Even if you have some friends or relatives for whom you would readily make the sacrifice, there has to be a point, as you scan down your list of friends and acquaintances, where you'd draw the line. "Let him find the money somewhere else," you'd think. The rest of the first segment of the film focuses on Gondo's moral struggle, under opposing pressures from Tawanishi, on the one side, and Aoki, Reiko, and Jun, on the other. I won't say what decision he makes; only that Tokura asks him to tell the kidnapper that he intends to pay, whether or not he will, to buy the police some time.
After the exchange is set up, the story suddenly shifts to a dramatic, high-paced transitional segment on one of the Japanese express trains, known as "bullet" trains. This segment is an adrenal rush, a bit reminiscent of a scene out of American films like Speed, and provides a very nice bridge between the more methodical opening and closing parts of the film. The police have done their best to anticipate what the kidnapper might do and to lay their traps, but the kidnapper's preparation proves very thorough and thwarts the authorities, for the time being.
The third and final film segment plays like a police procedural. Gondo hardly appears at all in the last part of the film. Chief Detective Tokura becomes the central protagonist, with the kidnapper, Ginjirô Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), his antagonist. This film is not designed as a "who-dunnit," so I give nothing away by mentioning the kidnapper's name. He is revealed to viewers very early in the film's final portion. In this third part of the film, the emphasis is initially on the slow progress of the police investigation, resulting from diligent and meticulous legwork and lab work. As viewers, we sit in on the various briefing sessions for the progress reports, sometimes illustrated through flashbacks or flash-forwards. We also attend some press briefings in which the press is enlisted to provide disinformation to the perpetrator. The kidnapper turns out to be a murderer as well. Once his identity is determined, Tokura decides that the man needs to be observed for a while rather than immediately arrested, in order to gain enough evidence to pin the murders on him as well as the kidnapping (which would only result in a fifteen year sentence). A delicate cat-and-mouse game ensues that takes us through sleazy downtown streets, a crowded nightclub packed with raucous American soldiers and fun loving Japanese girls, and, finally, into the depths of hell itself – a drug alley jam-packed with desperate addicts.
Toward the end of the film, Gondo and the kidnapper come face-to-face twice, once inadvertently and once at the kidnapper's request. These dramatically effective scenes nicely link the film's opening and closing segments, bringing the story full-circle.
Themes: Without being heavy-handed, Kurosawa manages to invest this film with several important themes. One theme is the essential conflict between humanistic values and cutthroat competitive practices inherent in capitalist commercial enterprises. Under the influence of American occupation, Japan had adopted American style business practices but, in so doing, the country had, to some extent, sold its soul to the devil. Gondo, as a man with a certain amount of business integrity, starts out trying to preserve the quality of the soles on the shoes produced by his company, but soon has to turn to preserving the quality of his own soul. He has to wonder how the financial well being of his family weighs in relation to the life of a lower class boy? Mifune does a brilliant job expressing his character's moral and psychic struggle, both physically and verbally. Kurosawa does a great job, in this film, reminding us that the measure of a man's morality is not how conflicted he is about doing the right thing but whether he does or does not find his way to the right course of action in the end. The shabbiness of business ethics is also revealed by the lack of loyalty of the executives to the "old man" who currently runs the company. Later, Gondo gets dismissed from the company and his house repossessed, despite a massive outpouring of public support and sympathy for him.
A second theme of this film is the issue of class disparities, alluded to in the film's titles (for both the Japanese version and the American release). The literal translation of the Japanese title is "Heaven and Hell." Heaven stands for the wealthy executive's magnificent mansion on top of a hill. Hell is the slum below. The lower class folks gaze up at the paradise on the hill while Gondo and his family gaze down. The killer says, "My room was so cold in winter and so hot in summer that I couldn't sleep." The picture window in the killer's small flat opens toward Gonzo's paradise and he keeps his telescope pointed at the mansion's living room. The American title, "High and Low," is effective in its own way. The wealthy live on high; those in poverty down below. The narcotic addicts that populate the drug alley, get high on heroin, but soon sink into the depths of withdrawal. One could also draw a connection to "High and Low" as a form of poker, since Gonzo was put in a position of gambling with Shinichi's life and his own financial future. Certainly class disparities can lead to envy and hatred, but kidnapping and murder are never justified on the basis of such envy. Kurosawa also illustrates the issue of class disparities through the relationship between Gonzo and his chauffeur, Aoki. Aoki is never less than deferent and sometimes even grovels. Gonzo's son is easily worth a 30 million yen ransom; Aoki's son may or may not be.
Only the film's third theme is standard stuff for crime stories. Like most crime films, this one concludes on the familiar note: crime doesn't pay. In the end, Takeuchi, the killer, asks to meet with Gonzo, determined to prove to him that he will not be dying crying or afraid. Instead, his smug smile gradually withers away and he breaks down sobbing in terror.
Production Values: The story was based on a novel by American Ed McBain called King's Ransom. The expert structure of the screenplay is vaguely reminiscent of that for the American television show, Law and Order, in which a crime story is examined from two different angles. In High and Low, the first angle is the moral dilemma of the victim of the crime and the second vantage point is that of the police, as they pursue the perpetrator. Kurosawa nicely varies the film's pace, interjecting tension and excitement through the high-paced segment on the bullet train and, later, the tailing of the subject as the film approaches its climax. These suspenseful scenes provide a nice offset to the more methodical portions relating to the moral dilemma and the police procedures. This is not a dialog-intensive film and should even please those viewers with subtitle phobias. The story is told more through the film's construction and images than its words, something that only the best directors learn to do.
As fine as this film is, I do have a couple of minor complaints with the script – plot flaws, in effect. One concerns the murder of an addict by the killer near the end, while the police are following him to gather evidence, having delayed his arrest so that they can ensure that he'll get capital punishment. Tokura's decision not to arrest the kidnapper immediately was irresponsible and ended up costing that young addict her life. Sacrificing a life in order to ensure that a criminal gets a death penalty rather than fifteen years confinement is not a morally justifiable tradeoff. The decision smacks of disregard for the safety of the people of the slum, perhaps because they are poor. In my opinion, that script element undercuts the class disparity issue that Kurosawa has raised in the film. My second issue is that the killer was a medical intern. I don't doubt that medical interns sometimes commit heinous crimes, but it is hard to imagine one doing so from the motivation of class envy. Crimes relating to class envy are typically committed by those permanently mired in the lower class, but an intern can reasonably expect to be upwardly mobile.
The opening segment of the film takes place almost entirely in the living room of Gonzo's house. The cinematographer, Asakazu Nakai, manages to convey a claustrophobic feeling to this part of the film that visually reflects Gonzo's sense of being trapped by his moral dilemma. Kurosawa used mainly long takes at the beginning of the film but introduced increasing quick, fluid cuts toward the end, to build tension. Nakai uses a lot of both high and low angle camera placements, giving still another layer of meaning to the film's American title. The sets for the downtown scenes were outstanding.
One thing to watch in particular in this film is how skillfully Kurosawa places his various characters within the frame spaces. In one scene, for example, Gonzo and Reiko are in the background, arguing the moral problem of whether or not to pay the ransom for their chauffeur's son. Between us and the central characters in the scene are two of the police officers, standing quietly with heads bowed, facing away from the arguing husband and wife, trying to make themselves invisible, as though the were ashamed of having invaded a private moment. That skillful frame construction intensifies our own sense that we are observing a privileged moment in which core issues of personality and motivation are being shaken and stirred. Later, there's a beautiful shot in the drug alley, where an addict in withdrawal is scratching a cement wall in agony, while the villain looks on with his reflective sunglasses imparting a devilish glow to his eyes.
The transfer to DVD was made from a new and pristine 35mm composite print. The film is in black-and-white and has that film noir tendency toward dark images. You may want to adjust the contrast on your television to optimize viewing. The soundtrack features skillful use of environmental sounds along with a variety of music, including original music by Masaru Sato, a brief excerpt from Schubert's Trout Quintet, and some American rock music in the nightclub.
Tatsuya Nakadai was soon to replace Mifune as Kurosawa's lead male, in such films as Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985). He had already worked for Kurosawa in Yojimbo (1961). He gives a forceful performance here as Chief Inspector Tokura. Tsutomu Yamazaki was deliciously sinister as the villain. He later worked in Kagemusha (1980) and Tampopo (1986).
Kyôko Kagawa, who played Reiko, had previously appeared in Tokyo Story (1953), Sanshô, the Baliff (1954), and, for Kurosawa, in The Bad Sleep Well (1960). Tatsuya Mihashi, who played the secretary, was also in Chushingura (1962). Kenjiro Ishiyama, the bald detective, provided most of the comic relief in this film. Old Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura had a bit part as the Chief of the Investigation Section. He had major roles in such films as Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), Rashômon (1950), Ikiru (1952), and The Seven Samurai (1954).
Bottom-Line: The Criterion DVD is not up to their usual standards in one respect. There are absolutely no extras on the DVD itself (no trailer even) and the four-page liner booklet has only a two-page essay plus the list of scenes. Nevertheless, Criterion is charging their premium price for this release, as if it were "special edition" material. Nevertheless, the film itself is provided in as fine a quality as you're ever likely to find. This is an exciting and entertaining film and easy to recommend.
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