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High and Low is the English title for (天国と地獄, Tengoku to jigoku, literally "Heaven and Hell"), 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.

Plot

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High and Low is a play in two acts, clearly distinct from one another in directorial style, lighting and composition. 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 the chauffeur and his wife, 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, 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. The characters have chosen their paths, and though one might empathise for a moment, there are no true antiheroes to be found.

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

External links

• Tengoku to jigoku at IMDb
• Criterion Collection essay by Chuck Stephens

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