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High and Low
Actors : Toshirô Mifune, Yutaka Sada, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi
Director : Akira Kurosawa
Studio : Criterion Collection, The
by Criterion Collection, The
Release Date : 2000-06-06
Publisher : Criterion Collection, The
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780780021181
UPC : 037429127131
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 61 reviews)
List Price : $29.95
Our Price : $24.88
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Description |
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Akira Kurosawa's (Rashomon, Stray Dog) exquisitely crafted adaptation of an Ed McBain mystery is one of the greatest suspense films ever made. Featuring two of Japan's greatest stars, Toshiro Mifune (Seven Samurai) and Tatsuya Nakada |
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Marketadvisory.com essential video |
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Although best known for his samurai classics, Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa proved himself equally adept at contemporary dramas and thrillers, and 1962's High and Low offers a powerful showcase for Kurosawa's versatile skill. The great Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy industrialist who has just raised a large sum of money to execute his planned takeover of a successful shoe manufacturer. Fate intervenes when he receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped, and by unfortunate coincidence the ransom demand is nearly equivalent to the amount Mifune has raised for his corporate coup. A philosophical dilemma emerges when it is revealed that the executive's son is safe, and that it is actually his chauffeur's son who has been taken. What follows is both a tense detective thriller, as the police attempt to track down the kidnapper, and a compelling illustration of class division in Japan--the "high and low" of the title. Far be it from Kurosawa to make a mere thriller, however; this loose adaptation of the Ed McBain novel King's Ransom provides the director with ample opportunity to develop a visual strategy that perfectly enhances the story's sociological themes. The Criterion Collection DVD of this extraordinary film is presented in the original "Tohoscope" aspect ratio of 2.35:1. --Jeff Shannon |
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One of the greatest of all times |
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For me this is one of the greatest works of cinema every created. I am not prone to hyperbole, but High and Low constantly remains at the top of my favorite movies list. Toshiro Mifune shines brightly. |
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Masterpiece |
High And Low (Tengoku To Jigoku; literally Heaven And Hell) is a film that is so perfect in every detail it shows how utterly silly similar Hollywood takes on the matter are, and were: think Ron Howard's and Mel Gibson's silly 1996 flick Ransom, or any of Alfred Hitchcock's crime dramas from the 1950s or 1960s. Yes, critics often resort to the copout that Hitchcock was not deep, but technically was great. True, to a degree, but one need only watch the rail car sequence in this film to see how staid, old fashioned, conservative, and utterly quaint Hitchcock's ideas on crime were. The truth is that Hitchcock really had no idea what drove criminals. Kurosawa did. To the Englishman, crimes were Freudian impelled, and committed by people with manifest things wrong with them. The claim he made was one merely had to be adept at spotting such things. Kurosawa shows that crime (as it does in reality) emerges from complex and obscure things. Its evildoers are often manifestly plain and their reasons never discernible. What drives High And Low to such greatness is that, even after all is revealed, the criminal apprehended, and the film at an end, the viewer is still pondering- in the best sense, and still unable to grasp how and why such a thing occurred. Yet, the film only gets to that point after peerless artistic and technical means.
The peerless screenplay was written by Kurosawa, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni, adapted from the 1959 pulp novel King's Ransom. The book was written by Ed McBain, pseudonym for Evan Hunter, which was the adopted name of Salvatore Albert Lombino. Using a variety of pen names, McBain penned pulp crime books that were three or four levels below Mickey Spillane. As Hunter, he wrote The Blackboard Jungle and the screen adaptation for Hitchcock's The Birds- probably the best film the great profile ever made. In short, under whatever guise, Hunter was no budding John Steinbeck. This makes the adaptation by Hisaita all the more impressive, for, while I never read the novel the film is derived from, as a youth I read a few McBain books and, even then, saw they were cardboard- both character- and plot-wise. Most criticisms of the film claim that, aside from the basic premise, the two works deviate greatly. One can thus likely (according to Occam's Razor) attribute the positives in this 143 minute (but swift paced) long film to the work of Hisaita and company, not McBain....Overall, High And Low is a great film, whose Americanized, like Vittorio De Sica's Ladri Di Biciclette; whose title has historically been mistranslated as The Bicycle Thief rather than Bicycle Thieves, it is a fortuitous gaffe, for the `wrong' translated title is far more evocative and less strident than its literal translation. The film's exploration and criticisms of social aspects of times and places past is timeless and the film shows how a great artist can mine true cosmic depth out of the must mundane of propositions that lesser artists make hackwork out of, such as Reiko's banal query: `What good is success if you lose your humanity?' The real tragedy of this film is not what occurs within its frame, but that even such banalities are not asked today in the modern world of filmmaking, much less extrapolated upon in such a proud and grand way. Akira Kurosawa was a giant of cinema, and world art, in general; a man whose output will be seen, centuries hence, the way Shakespeare's and Goya's are today, but that gigantism was built upon and borne by the desire to explore even the minutest moments of the human condition- not in a weepy, bleeding heart liberal sort of way, but in a deep, penetrating way that celebrated the best part of the human being: his intellect. In today's dumbed down Politically Correct society, such films are not only not made, but not even contemplated. When the history of turn of the millennium cinema is finally written, one of the key questions asked will be what happened to the basic striving for high art? Why did it become gauche to want to excel, and to want to treat an audience with respect? Of course, the film asks these same sorts of queries (along with the more banal ones it subverts) in regards to its lead character's professions, which only shows how great art recapitulates itself again and again, regardless of the changing circumstances of history, while bad art is entombed by its stolidity. Great artists know this, and, while glaring at his own reflection, at film's end, one senses a more peaceable Kingo Gondo knows it, too. Or, at least we hope he does. That we do says as much of Kurosawa as it does of us and our newer times. |
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An eternal classic |
Nowdays they don't do films like this.More than an inspiration for Mel Gibson's Ransom. The film is a masterpiece from beginning to end. Not a single moment wasted.Toshiro Mifune shows why is consider by many the most important japanese (or even asian) actor of all time.
Kurosawa ranks for me at the top of the best directors just sharing his place with John Ford.
The Criterion release is just great. Image and surround sound are clean and clear. I wish we have in Spain that marvelous catalog. |
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High and Low |
While I generally view Kurosawa's original Stray Dog as another in long line of his genre setting triumphs, High And Low is his masterpiece of the crime genre. High and Low was made in the middle of his career before Kurosawa's decline when his failure with Dodeskaden and getting kicked off of Tora, Tora, Tora caused him to go on hiatus for nearly ten years and drove him to attempt suicide. Thankfully Russia came along with a chance to adapt Dersu Uzala a film I wish was given the respectable double dip that Criterion is doing with their earlier releases.
I discovered High and Low early in my exploration of Kurosawa mainly overlooking it because it wasn't a samurai period film something I thought He had excelled in and only that. It happened by chance that I borrowed the orginal Criterion disc from a friend at work and quickly became engorged in any film made by the master. This film has the earmarks of Kurosawa film with social commentary, great characters, amazing black and white photography (the liner for the dvd makes mentions of lighting on the killers mirrored sunglasses during the finale), and scenes that are almost acted without any dialogue. Plus its just a great damn thriller.
High and Low was adapted from a 87th precinct novel from the late Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). It transplants the story from America to Yokohama in the middle of the summer. As the film begins shoe maker executive Gondo is having a meeting with subordinates where he outlines his plans to take over the company. The others are flummoxed as they want to create flimmsier shoes at cheaper prices and plan ..ping Gondo. Things come to a head when Gondo gets a phone call from a man who says He's kidnapped his son who was recently playing with the chauffers son around the house. Unfortunately his son comes in and as it turns out the chauffers son has been the one kidnapped. The Kidnapper discovers this also but won't budge on the ransom demand so Gondo is set up with a moral choice. He calls the cops despite the danger it poses but trys whatever He can to figure out a way not to pay the ransom.The cops arrive and then begins the first half of the film as a plan is devised to get back both the boy and the money. The second half of the film involves the police investigation trying to find out who the kidnapper is ending with a chase through the city in the night through back alleys and bars filled with foreigners all with as little dialogue as possible depending mainly on the emotions of the actors to sell the intensity. While the first half is more character driven the last half of the film is more procedural which of course is what appealed to me more.
Being the fan that I am the only way to describe High and Low would be to use the word impeccable. Its not the most loved Kurosawa film (something I'd disagree with) but it has the hallmarks of greatness in my opinion. While I love the procedural half of the film, the first set only in the Gondo house is intense thanks to the acting and directing talent. One of the great things that I've always loved about Kurosawa is his use of long takes and this helps build the intensity of the scenes as the camera flows around the living room watching the characters. On the acting side you have the two of Kurosawa's main group. Toshiro Mifune is always able to play intensity with bravado and flair but as the film progresses you can see him begining to falter in his plans not to pay the ransom demand. At the end He's given up everything He gained, all his riches gone until He's back to mowing his own lawn in one of the famous images of the film like He's trying to hold back the inevitable. The second actor is Tatsuya Nakadai as Chief Detective Tokoda. Nakadai worked on the last of Kurosawa's masterpieces (being Kagemusha and Ran) and this was a great almost simple performance. Tokoda heading up the investigation isn't a renegade cop character mostly simply dressed and handsome. But Nakadai has a commanding presence that demands you to watch him. I can't really describe what makes Nakadai Mifune's perfect accomplice in the film.
In the end its a perfect film in my mind, one of the few I wouldn't hesitate to brand it as such.
I was speaking on my original experience with the film which was Criterions orignal release. Around the time Criterion double dipped Seven Samurai and gave it the treatment it deserved I hoped they'd do the same for High and Low as the picture on the original disc was slightly cropped at the sides. On this set they've thankfully corrected that issue while adding some great features like a commentary from Stephen Prince and more of the It Is Wonderful to Create series that they've included on almost all of their Kurosawa releases. Its strange that original Criterion is still listed for sale as this is the only set worth buying in my opinion. |
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the latest Criterion release |
This is one of my top 5 best movies of all time. And I'm old enough to have seen it in several incarnations, starting with impossible to own, to a grainy VHS version with impossible-to-read subtitles, to the first Criterion release to this one. This latest version has all the bells and whistles a Kurosawa fan would want. Interviews with Mifune (and the actor who plays the kidnapper), a documentary on the making of the film and an interesting (if intrusive) commentary track from Stephen Prince.
But did anyone but me notice that this latest version of the film itself is not as crisp and clear as the former Criterion release of this film?
That last version was a revelation; I saw things (background, details and all that)that I'd never noticed before, in astounding clarity. This version seems darker and not as high quality. It was tough rating this one. I'm not sorry I bought it, but I'll probably go back to watching the original Criterion version when I want to see this film. Disc One rates 3 stars. Disc 2, with the extras, rates 5.
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