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High and Low (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.

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 incompetent and greedy executives. 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. Gondo himself, importantly, represents a member of the burakumin class who has risen above his caste and eventually validates himself in the eyes of the audience by his virtuous act, providing the ransom for a child that is not his own.

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 Kurusawa 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
• Chuck Stephens essay at criterionco.com

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