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High and Low (1963 film)

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High and Low
Theatrical poster displaying the title and acting credits in kanji. Gondo (Mifune) is seen surrounded by police investigators with his ear to a phone.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAkira Kurosawa
Screenplay by
Based onKing's Ransom
by Evan Hunter
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography
Edited byAkira Kurosawa[1]
Music byMasaru Satō
Production
companies
Release date
  • 1 March 1963 (1963-03-01) (Japan)
Running time
143 minutes[1]
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese
Budget¥230 million
Box office¥460.2 million

High and Low (Japanese: 天国と地獄, Hepburn: Tengoku to Jigoku, lit. 'Heaven and Hell') is a 1963 Japanese police procedural directed by Akira Kurosawa. It was written by Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijirō Hisaita [ja], and Ryūzō Kikushima as a loose adaptation of the 1959 novel King's Ransom by Evan Hunter. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyōko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi, Yutaka Sada [ja], and Tsutomu Yamazaki, it tells the story of Japanese businessman Kingo Gondo (Mifune) struggling for control of the major shoe company at which he is a board member. He plans a leveraged buyout of the company with his life savings, when a kidnapper mistakenly abducts his chauffeur's son to ransom him for 30 million yen.

Production began in 1962 at Toho Studios. Filming took place on location at Yokohama and on set at Toho; it lasted from 2 September to 30 January 1963. The film has been seen to represent a moral conflict within the backdrop of the post–World War II Japanese economic miracle. High and Low's approach to issues of social class and narrative structure have been praised, with technical elements—such as the film's blocking—receiving particular attention. Post-production took just under a month, and after test-screenings in mid-February 1963, it received a wide distribution.

High and Low was released in Japan on 1 March 1963 and received generally positive reviews both domestically and abroad. It became the highest-grossing film at the Japanese domestic box office that year. It was in the Official Selection for the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globe Awards for 1964. The film has since received greater acclaim, and is often considered to be among Kurosawa's greatest films. It is viewed as influential on police procedural cinema, and has been remade multiple times internationally.

Plot

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Wealthy executive Kingo Gondo is engaged in a struggle to gain control of the company National Shoes. The board of the company is split between executives seeking to make cheap and low-quality shoes, and the ageing largest shareholder who makes sturdy but unfashionable shoes. Gondo rejects these plans, envisioning a strategy requiring high production costs for long-term profitability. He has secretly set up a leveraged buyout to gain control of the company, mortgaging all his property. Just as he is about to put the plan into action, Gondo 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 returns home from playing outside. However, Jun's playmate Shinichi, the child of Gondo's chauffeur, is missing as the kidnappers had 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 forced to make a decision whether to pay the ransom to save the child or complete the buyout. After contemplating it, Gondo announces that he will not pay the ransom, fearing that doing so would jeopardise his job, his finances, and the future of his family. His plans are thwarted 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. The evening prior to the ransom exchange, Gondo fixes two briefcases to contain pods that release a foul odour when submerged in water or pink smoke when burnt. Following the kidnapper's instructions, the money is put into the briefcases and thrown out from a moving train.

The police undertake an investigation using clues from the kidnapper's phone calls and Shinichi's memory to determine his identity. They eventually find the hideout where Shinichi was kept prisoner, discovering two bodies of the kidnapper's accomplices suspiciously killed by an overdose of heroin. The police surmise that the kidnapper engineered their deaths by supplying them with uncut drugs. Meanwhile, Gondo is forced out of the company and his creditors demand the collateral put up against his loan in lieu of the debt. Seeking the support of the press, the police encourage them to report the story widely and help misdirect the kidnapper with a false report. Gondo is seen as a hero, while the National Shoes Company is vilified. Further clues, culminating in a plume of pink smoke, lead to the identity of the kidnapper: a medical intern at a nearby hospital. However, the police lack hard evidence to link him to the murder of his accomplices.

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. Concerned about his accomplices, the kidnapper tests the drugs' strength on another drug addict who overdoses and dies. The kidnapper is apprehended at the accomplices' hideout by the police while trying to supply another lethal dose of uncut heroin. Most of the ransom money is recovered, but it is too late to save Gondo's property from auction. With the kidnapper facing a death sentence, he requests to see Gondo while in prison. Gondo agrees to meet him face to face. At this time, Gondo is now working for a rival shoe company, earning less money but enjoying much less oversight in running it. The kidnapper proclaims that he has no regrets for his actions. He reveals that envy from seeing Gondo's house on the hill every day led him to conceive of the crime, shrieking as he's dragged away and a screen divides the two of them, leaving Gondo alone.

Cast

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Main cast

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Other characters

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Production

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Development

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A headshot of a young Evan Hunter
Evan Hunter (credited as Ed McBain) c. 1953

High and Low's screenplay was co-written by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita, and Ryūzō Kikushima.[1] The story is based on Evan Hunter's novel King's Ransom (1959). Toho purchased the rights to adapt the novel in 1961 for $5,000 ($52,611 in 2024).[2] The film contains significant differences from the novel.[3] The largest change between the novel and the film occurs after the structural shift from Gondo's house to the police investigation: much of the story during and after the ransom exchange is not present in the original work. Unlike the novel too, drugs are featured,[4][5] and Gondo does not catch the kidnapper himself.[6] The original script ended with Inspector Tokura and Gondo having a conversation, but Kurosawa, after seeing Tsutomu Yamazaki portray the kidnapper with such passion, changed his mind while editing the film.[7]

The script was written straight-to-final draft (a process that creates a production-ready screenplay without writing prior drafts and treatments), similarly to Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962) before it.[8] During the creation of High and Low, co-writer and producer Ryūzō Kikushima took a seat on the board of Kurosawa's self-financed production company: Kurosawa Production.[9] Kurosawa said after the release of Red Beard (1965) that he made High and Low because his friend's son was kidnapped.[10] Despite not being particularly impressed with the writing of Hunter's novel, he was apparently struck by the concept of the novel's kidnapping. Even though he was shocked at the brazenness and cruelty of the crime depicted, Kurosawa felt that his criminal deserved sympathy in tandem with the sadistic impulses he was subjected to.[11]

Pre-production

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The film secured a budget of ¥230 million.[a][12] Pre-production began on 20 July 1962, when Kurosawa began casting roles that had not yet been filled. He cast Tsutomu Yamazaki to play the role of the kidnapper, possibly at the suggestion of his former assistant, Hiromichi Horikawa [ja], who directed Yamazaki in the 1962 film My Daughter and I [ja]. Yamazaki later reflected on the audition, during which he felt anxious and nauseous, calming down only after he began exchanging lines with Kurosawa.[13] The role launched him to acting success, appearing in two more of Kurosawa's films—Red Beard and Kagemusha (1980)—and starring in the popular 1970s TV series Hissatsu Shiokinin.[14] Kurosawa also included cameos by his previous collaborators, including the star of his first film Sanshiro Sugata (1943), Susumu Fujita, and character actor Masao Shimizu.[15]

A picture of a young Kurosawa wearing a bucket hat looking over his shoulder
Akira Kurosawa, the film's director and co-writer, was inspired to adapt its source novel after his friend's son was kidnapped.

Two different sets were used to film Gondo's home overlooking Yokohama. One was 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 outside of the location set could not be photographed well at night. The scenes with the curtains drawn were filmed at Toho Studios. The set itself was a room with an open wall, with the camera rarely entering.[16] The location of the final scene took inspiration from prisons in other countries, installing glass doors and wire mesh behind the windows.[17] An additional large set was made for the original final conversation scene to take place in.[18]

Filming

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High and Low was filmed at Toho Studios and on location in Yokohama.[1] Filming began on 2 September 1962 with the first act.[19] Many of the takes shot for the film's first half were ten minutes long, and it is possible that they would have been longer if the capacity of the cameras' magazines were larger.[20] The film was shot using TohoScope, a widescreen filming system.[21] Long-distance lenses were used, particularly during the first half of the film to obtain close-ups, as the camera rarely entered the set. The majority of the first half was filmed at Toho Studios.[16] During production of his films, Kurosawa would take his frustrations out on the cast and crew, a pattern that became worse during High and Low's creation—it was here that his reputation of making difficulties for the studio and those working on the film began to precede him.[22]

The ransom exchange sequence (wherein money is dropped through the open window of a Kodama express train) required nine cameras to film and was shot almost entirely with hand-helds.[16][23] All the cameramen at Toho were required to film simultaneously, which led to every other film production being shut down for the day. One camera was positioned under the bridge where the money drop took place, two eight-millimetres photographed the kidnappers at the ends of the train, and detectives were each followed by two cameras.[24][16] There was only one attempt to film the scene due to the reservation and use of the express train.[24][25] During the take, one of the cameras following Takeshi Katō on the train malfunctioned and did not capture the scene. The crew had to reshoot the scene featuring him on a different day.[24] According to script supervisor Teruyo Nogami, during this scene, a blue sheet was used to disguise alterations made to the second floor of a nearby building that had been hiding the face of one of the kidnapper's accomplices, a job conceived and executed just a day before filming took place.[26]

The Yokohama exteriors were filmed in January 1963, but the cold weather made it difficult to act convincingly as if it were summer. For one scene, Kurosawa dyed the nearby river with black paint and poured dirt into it to make the environment filthier.[27] While filming the final scene, Yamazaki burnt his hands on the wire mesh from the heat of the lighting.[28] Filming ended on 30 January 1963.[29]

Editing

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Kurosawa focuses on the continuity of character actions in the editing of ''High and Low''. The film's narrative chronology shows past and present simultaneously.[30] The use of multiple cameras simultaneously during the film's first half meant that a ten-minute scene would have a corresponding hour of footage to cut between.[16] Kurosawa employs colour for the first time in his career mid-way through the film.[31] The use of a trail of pink smoke in a pair of shots propelled the investigation forward. According to film theorist Noël Burch, the moment acts as a singularising pivot that determines the investigative response.[32] At this point in his career, Kurosawa felt that he and his crew were still too unfamiliar with the use of colour in film, and so decided to continue shooting films in black and white.[33]

The original script ending was changed when Kurosawa noted the performance of Yamazaki as being especially powerful. The original final scene contained a reflective conversation between Mifune and Nakadai.[7][34][17] The crew spent two weeks filming the original ending scene to have followed the confrontation between Gondo and the kidnapper Takeuchi, but Kurosawa ultimately decided to cut it in favour of the final ending.[18][34] The film was test-screened in mid-February.[29] The final cut is 3,924 metres of film in length.[35]

Music

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High and Low was scored by Masaru Satō, his eighth collaboration with Akira Kurosawa. The film includes stock music from The H-Man, the music of which was also produced by Satō.[36] To Kurosawa, music in films was supposed to reflect the mood of the scene, with its context and volume under tight control. The opening titles feature a slow mambo, which is used as a tone-setter and thereafter used sparingly throughout the rest of the film. The music's context either supports or combats the image by way of aural cues, for example, the use of trumpets with the discovery of new leads in the film to amplify the success of the investigation.[37] During the scene where the kidnapper is first seen by the audience, Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet can be heard on the radio.[20] Kurosawa had originally wanted to use "Greenfields" by The Brothers Four but could not buy the rights.[38] When the police are in pursuit of the kidnapper, the Neapolitan song "'O sole mio" is played,[39] but during climactic scenes, the relative lack of music was intentional so as to not disrupt important or dramatic moments.[37]

Themes

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In his analysis of intertextuality, a scholar and acquaintance of Kurosawa Donald Richie notes the oppositional extremity of High and Low's Japanese title, Tengoku to Jigoku—which translates to 'heaven and hell'—and underlines that by comparing Yokohama to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. In this comparison, Mifune's Gondo takes on the role of Dante himself, at first unaware of the moral conflict ahead of him, with the accompanying police representing the angels, demigods, and Virgil.[39] To Richie, the moral character of the film is black and white, Kurosawa aligns Gondo with the representatives of heaven. 'Heaven' and 'hell' are contrasted as such until Gondo and Takeuchi are forced to reconcile with the fact that they had caused each other pain.[40] Stuart Galbraith IV also evokes Dante in the depiction of the film's environment, noting that while Gondo's 'heavenly' house looks down on the people below, this is contrasted with a 'hell' in Yokohama "that is, in part at least, seductive."[41] He further proposes that Gondo's nouveau riche background and moral compass matches that of Kurosawa and Mifune's own.[42]

A picture showing two detectives looking up at Gondo's house on the hill, with an array of smaller rickety houses in the foreground
Kingo Gondo's expensive house (background) and the houses of the shanty town downhill (foreground) framed together in the film

Stephen Prince notes, in his study of Kurosawa's filmography, a dialectical perspective defined by High and Low's structure, in which the reality created by the film conceals the social tensions between the lives of Gondo and Takeuchi.[43] He underscores this by focusing on the blocking of Kurosawa's characters that positions and integrates them within different social and moral frameworks.[44] The narrative shift that occurs between the wealthy Gondo's home and the geographical movement down the hill into the shanty town below it during the second half presents a multiplicity of perspective, which offers an entirely opposed view to the ordered and confined space of the first half.[45] Prince frames the film as centrally concerned with perception, that the use of images and technologies such as radios, cameras, telephones, and tape recorders mediates the human relationship between Gondo and Takeuchi but obscures the social structure.[46] The structure is never reconciled and synthesised, but remains hidden and separated by Gondo's appeal to humanism in their final confrontation.[47]

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.[33][48]

To historian David Conrad, the film's foregrounding of Japan's economic growth (such as the proliferation of personal luxuries, cars, and air conditioning) reflects its growing internationalism.[49] This growth of international and consumer culture is seen in elements such as the Old West cowboy outfits Jun and Shinichi are seen wearing, and the nightclub seen towards the end of the film.[50] In particular, Conrad draws attention to the narrative's drug-related criminal theme and waste management as parts of the police investigation that indicate the concerns of contemporary society.[51] He comments that, despite the usual association of Kurosawa's films with humanism, the film ends by condoning capital punishment as an acceptable outcome of the justice system.[52] In addition, he describes "the specter of miscegenation" that is evoked in the nightclub scene, which highlights the contemporary social restriction on interracial dating while subtly placing foreign influence under suspicion by linking it to criminality.[53]

The film's changes in adaptating the source material recontextualised the story, reframing it around a moral and social critique of modern Japan. Matthew Bernstein writes that Gondo's character was changed dramatically from Hunter's novel, effectively sidelining him from the second half of the story so that he may learn the humanistic obligation the individual has to society.[54] Film scholar Mike Phillips identifies the film with a form of remediation: which acts as a criticism of early financialisation (a change in economies that places more emphasis on financial services rather than material goods) through the absorption of popular and consumer culture in society.[55] He sees the Old West outfits worn by Jun and Shinichi as embodying this material culture which links TV westerns with an "ephemerality" that allows the kidnapper to treat the children as interchangeable commodities.[56] To Phillips the film's final scene presents a dialectic relationship between Gondo and the kidnapper wherein Gondo's reflection in the window embodies a material rejection of television as a symbol of this cultural commodification.[57]

Also commenting on the changes in Japanese society, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto wrote about the film as an embodiment of urban anxiety during Japan's post–World War II recovery. Due to changes in developing infrastructure Yokohama was rebuilt, its streets and society didn't fit with older maps of the area.[58] Yoshimoto thus views the contemporary spatial reorganisation occurring in Yokohama as an interpretation that is part of the investigation which forms each characters' subjectivities.[59] He concludes that despite this, the film does not fully reflect a renewed sense of national identity, however, and considers its class commentary reactionary.[60] Film scholar James Goodwin views the use of a police investigation for the narrative's structure to be an interrogation of 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 (1948) and the bombed out factories in The Bad Sleep Well (1960) as aspects of the environment that represent these social divisions.[61] Due to this class divide, by the film's final scene, Gondo's heroic actions as the protagonist are associated with a psychology that is shared with the kidnapper.[62]

Philosopher Gilles Deleuze writes in his book Cinema 1: The Movement Image, that High and Low demonstrates the situation-action paradigm in its structure. To Deleuze, situation-action is a structural formula, it refers to an understanding of spatial and environmental factors in the film's frame that enable characters within the story to act. In High and Low, the narrative's second half is a "senseless, brutal action" after the confined and theatrical space of its situational first half.[63] He believes that this transition from situation to action represents an expansion of space in the film which sees the exploration and exposition of its moral themes of 'heaven and hell'; at the same time, the Kurosawan hero crosses through that expanded space laterally by acting. The process of the situation-action paradigm in the film represents a mutual agreement across the class divide.[63] Film scholar David Desser refers to High and Low as containing three chronological planes of action that "reveals Kurosawa's fascination with process".[64] He notes this attention to process as part of a tension that occurs between Kurosawa's humanistic sentiment and formalistic tendencies.[65] To Desser, the humanism present in the film demonstrates a transcendence of its adapted source material's structure.[66]

Release

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Theatrical

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A still from the film depicting Gondo on the phone surrounded by anxious detectives listening to a phone call from the kidnapper
A promotional image from the February 1963 edition of Kinema Junpo, which depicts Gondo calling Jun's kidnappers as others listen in

High and Low was released in Japan on 1 March 1963.[1] Upon High and Low's release in Japan, people called Akira Kurosawa's household and threatened to kidnap his daughter, Kazuko Kurosawa. She was driven to and from school everyday, and grounded as a precaution to prevent a potential kidnapping.[67] During the production of The Bad Sleep Well, Kurosawa had been approached to direct a documentary of the 1964 Summer Olympics after High and Low finished production. While he was initially interested, by the release of High and Low, the Olympics were just a year and a half away, and the budget his staff submitted to the Organising Committee and Toho was considered excessive. His interest waned, and he officially backed out three weeks after the wide release of High and Low on 21 March. The documentary, Tokyo Olympiad, was eventually directed by Kon Ichikawa, and had a similar budget and crew to what Kurosawa had asked for.[68]

The American trailer for High and Low

In August 1963, the film was entered into the Venice Film Festival as part of the Official Selection.[69] Toho International released the film with English subtitles in the United States on 26 November 1963. Debuting in Toho Cinema, New York, the film acquired a wider, though modest, distribution through Walter Reade–Sterling.[29] Prior to release in the United Kingdom, a 1967 cut, done by the British Board of Film Classification, received a minor edit to its content.[70] The film was re-released in the United States, on new 35mm prints in 1986, and again in 2002.[71][72][73] In January and February 2023, the BFI ran a Kurosawa Season, providing platform for guest hosts (Asif Kapadia, Sonali Joshi, and Ian Haydn Smith) to discuss the major themes permeating Kurosawa's work, starting with High and Low.[74]

Home media

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A VHS version of the film was released by Home Vision Cinema, with The Criterion Collection responsible for the release of a DVD.[75] A Blu-ray version was released on 26 July 2011; included are interviews with Tsutomu Yamazaki and Toshiro Mifune, and a 37-minute documentary detailing the film's production.[76] Criterion has also released High and Low alongside other Kurosawa films in a box set.[77] The British Film Institute released a DVD of the film on 28 March 2005, with a Blu-ray version released on 27 January 2025.[78][79]

Reception

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Box office

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The film was a box office success in Japan, garnering ¥460.2 million in ticket sales[b] and becoming the highest grossing domestic film that year.[80][29] During the film's opening week at the Toho Cinema in New York, ticket sales were dampened by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At the end of its eight-week run in that cinema alone, the film generated around $46,800 total ($480,667 in 2024) in box office returns.[c] Beginning in its fifth week, the penultimate week of December in 1963, it started to play in different cinemas across New York.[84] The critical and commercial success of Kurosawa's films during the 1960s prompted 20th Century Fox to approach him with an offer to direct the Japanese half of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), a film about the attack on Pearl Harbor.[87] Kurosawa initially accepted the job as the director, but, due to difficulties during production, was replaced.[88] High and Low was re-released in the United States in 2002 as part of the "Kurosawa & Mifune" film festival; this multi-title release accrued $561,692 ($981,948 in 2024) in total.[72]

Critical response

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Contemporary opinion

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Contemporary reviews of High and Low were generally positive.[29][89][90] A review in Kinema Junpo magazine praised the film's direction, proclaiming it "a masterpiece" with a rich imagination, however criticising the lack of characterisation and "organic unity" between the film's two halves.[91] Critic Masahiro Ogi praised Kurosawa's eye for detail, contrasting his approach to the many contemporary Japanese films that used this aspect superfluously.[92] However, Tadao Sato believed that the film, along with other works of Kurosawa's made after I Live in Fear (1955), to be drained of thematic and sentimental meaning. He accused the characters of acting irrationally, particularly concerning the motivation of Yamazaki's kidnapper.[93]

Most American reviewers found High and Low's formal style captivating, but did not think the source content was worthy of the art.[3][94] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic lauded the film's technical elements but questioned why Kurosawa made the film, believing it retained a facile sense of the moral conflict in detective fiction from Hunter's novel.[95] In Time magazine's review, Kurosawa's scene composition was praised, as was his ability to build suspense; yet the review criticised its pacing after the kidnapper's identity is discovered, further referring to the film as "hackneyed, and at times impausible [sic]".[96] 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.[14]

Judith Crist of the New York Herald Tribune praised Kurosawa's creation of suspense and the expansion of the novel's moral conflict, but she did not consider it one of the ten best films of the year.[92] The New York Times considered the film to be an outstanding achievement among detective films, going on to commend the execution of the ransom-exchange on the train and the performances of Mifune and Nakadai.[97] The Los Angeles Times considered it a structural departure from Kurosawa's earlier films, celebrating High and Low's camera work and social perspective.[98] Writing for the Kenyon Review in 1965, Charles Higham praised the film's blocking and geometric design before analysing the film's third act as a humanistic exposure of modern Japan.[99]

Sight and Sound, viewing the film at the Venice Film Festival, dismissed it as "turgid and disappointing".[100] Upon release in the UK, a 1967 review in the magazine by Robert Vas singled out High and Low's structure as particularly inspired. Vas commended the film's technical elements, including the lighting and blocking, however, he criticised the film's ending as an uncomplicated message delivered by obvious metaphors.[101] A negative review in Cahiers du Cinéma dismissed the film's modern context and its "metaphysics and morality [...] taking precedence over suspense", despite praising the train scene as beautiful, it further criticised the film for police apologia and having sympathy for its rich protagonist.[102]

Retrospective opinion

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On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, High and Low has an approval rating of 96% based on 24 critic reviews. Those reviews with a score forming an average of 8/10.[103] As of 2024, it was the 6th highest-rated feature film on the social film-cataloguing site Letterboxd, as an average of the site's user ratings; it is the second-highest rated Kurosawa film on the site, after Seven Samurai (1954).[104][105] As of March 2025, High and Low was in the top 250 films rated on the media database IMDb, marked as the second highest-rated Kurosawa film behind Seven Samurai.[106] Tsutomu Yamazaki, viewing the film nearly 30 years after its release at the Sydney Film Festival, still considered the film "fresh and interesting", but cringed upon seeing his own acting. Meanwhile, Yutaka Sada considered it his best performance in all of Kurosawa's films.[107]

Prior to the 1986 American re-release of High and Low, Paul Attanasio, writing in The Washington Post, noted that it did not count among Kurosawa's masterpieces, but favourably compared the film's plot and symbolism with William Shakespeare's plays and connected the film with Throne of Blood (1957), Kurosawa's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, saying that "[High and Low is] Macbeth, if Macbeth had married better."[71] David Parkinson, writing for Empire in 2006, gave it four out of five stars, commenting on the film's use of obscured comparison between social classes to illustrate that the equality between men is separated by the choices they make when faced with crisis.[108] Scott Tobias wrote for The A.V. Club in 2008 that the film's divided structure heightened the film's realism to create a powerful sense of suspense.[109] In 2024, Slant Magazine named the film the 42nd best film noir, lauding its moral complexity as an elevation of the genre.[110] That same year, Paste magazine ranked it as Kurosawa's 5th best film, praising the film's structure for effectively using tense scenes to reveal the psychology of its characters.[111] Writing for The Guardian in 2025, Peter Bradshaw rated High and Low five out of five stars, praising the film's storytelling and moral dilemma, he refers to Gondo as "the ultimate capitalist ... [who finds] it isn't at all clear if he thinks his compromised moral heroism and sacrifice has been worth it."[112]

In a 1988 special edition of Kinema Junpo magazine, a poll of readers and 39 critics ranked the film the second best film of 1963, behind only The Insect Woman.[113] Filmmaker Takashi Miike recalled feeling a kinship with the film, including an obsession with its final scene.[7] Director Martin Scorsese included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker" in 2014, and on the list of his 84 favorite films in 2024.[114][115] In a GQ interview published in June 2025, game designer Hideo Kojima named it as one of his four favorite films, though he noted his preferences shift over time.[116]

Awards and accolades

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Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Mainichi Film Awards 1963 Best Film High and Low Won [117]
Best Screenplay Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijirō Hisaita, Ryūzō Kikushima
Venice International Film Festival 7 September 1963 Golden Lion High and Low Nominated [69]
Golden Globe Awards 11 March 1964 Foreign Film – Foreign Language High and Low Nominated [118]

Legacy

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After the film's release, the number of kidnappings in Japan reportedly increased slightly.[22] In emphasising the lenient sentencing of Japanese kidnapping laws, Kurosawa had intended to inspire tougher sentences; but was instead blamed for their increase.[119] The film is considered by some to be among Kurosawa's greatest works, despite receiving comparatively less acclaim than his films in the 1950s.[93][120] Film scholar Audie Bock appraised the film as the last of Kurosawa's great humanitarian dramas, believing his subsequent films to be too sanctimonious, containing a different moral sense.[121] It has been compared to Kurosawa's earlier police procedural Stray Dog (1949), marked by similar moral and social themes in an unfolding crime investigation set during summer.[122][123][98]

High and Low has been viewed as influential on the genre of police procedurals, including the films of Bong Joon Ho and David Fincher.[124][122] The 2019 Korean film Parasite, directed and co-written by Bong, has a similar premise as High and Low: a family living in an expensive house on a hill are unknowingly shadowed by criminals living in the poorer, lower part of the city. Bong confirmed that Parasite's themes of class disparity, as well as the design of the wealthy family's house, were directly inspired by Kurosawa's film.[125] The design of a set in The Batman (2022), and the premise of a deleted scene for the film, were revealed by its production designer to have taken inspiration from High and Low.[126] The Batman's director, Matt Reeves, had previously cited Kurosawa as one of his filmmaking heroes.[127] American actor and director Chris Weitz named High and Low his favourite Kurosawa film, stating that he's "drawn a lot from [it]".[128]

The Indian film Inkaar (1977) has been described as a Bollywood reproduction of High and Low.[129] The rights to remake the film were acquired by Universal in 1993, and Martin Scorsese was set to direct a script written by David Mamet, but the project lingered in development purgatory; an attempt to revive it in 2001 with Scorsese as co-producer also failed to materialise.[130] In 2007, the film was adapted into a J-drama by Yasuo Tsuruhashi for TV Asahi.[122] The plot of the 2023 miniseries Full Circle was inspired by High and Low.[131] Apple Original Films, in collaboration with A24, announced in 2024, that Spike Lee would be directing a reinterpretation of the film titled Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington, Ice Spice, ASAP Rocky, and Jeffrey Wright. The film is set for release in theatres by A24 on 22 August 2025, before it is available to stream on Apple TV+ on 5 September 2025.[132][133][134]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Equivalent to ¥1.09 billion in 2019.
  2. ^ Equivalent to ¥2.17 billion in 2019.
  3. ^ Variety magazine reported $46,800 in ticket sales from Toho Cinema by the end of the film's run in January 1964.[81][82][83][84][85][86]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f g Galbraith 1996, p. 213.
  2. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 342.
  3. ^ a b Galbraith 2002, p. 346.
  4. ^ Inoue 1963, p. 56.
  5. ^ Bernstein 2000, pp. 176, 179.
  6. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 351.
  7. ^ a b c Miike 2019.
  8. ^ Hashimoto 2006, p. 199.
  9. ^ Hashimoto 2006, p. 248.
  10. ^ Richie 1970, p. 183.
  11. ^ Mellen 1975, pp. 46–48.
  12. ^ Itō 1976, p. 408.
  13. ^ Galbraith 2002, pp. 352–353.
  14. ^ a b Mochizuki 2018.
  15. ^ Bungei Shunju.
  16. ^ a b c d e Richie 1970, p. 168.
  17. ^ a b Nogami 2014, p. 130.
  18. ^ a b Mellen 1975, p. 50.
  19. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 353.
  20. ^ a b Richie 1970, p. 164.
  21. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 702.
  22. ^ a b Wild 2014, p. 136.
  23. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 350.
  24. ^ a b c Galbraith 2002, p. 354.
  25. ^ Nogami 2014, p. 123.
  26. ^ Nogami 2014, pp. 123–124.
  27. ^ Galbraith 2002, pp. 354, 356.
  28. ^ Nogami 2014, p. 129.
  29. ^ a b c d e Galbraith 2002, p. 357.
  30. ^ Richie 1970, p. 193.
  31. ^ Wild 2014, p. 151.
  32. ^ Burch 1979, p. 304.
  33. ^ a b Mellen 1975, p. 44.
  34. ^ a b Cardullo 2008, p. 60.
  35. ^ Richie 1970, p. 208.
  36. ^ Galbraith 1996, p. 214.
  37. ^ a b Richie 1970, p. 195.
  38. ^ Nogami 2014, p. 127.
  39. ^ a b Richie 1970, p. 166.
  40. ^ Richie 1970, pp. 166, 170.
  41. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 349.
  42. ^ Galbraith 2002, pp. 349–352.
  43. ^ Prince 1991, pp. 188–189.
  44. ^ Prince 1991, pp. 190–191.
  45. ^ Prince 1991, pp. 194–195.
  46. ^ Prince 1991, pp. 188, 196.
  47. ^ Prince 1991, p. 198.
  48. ^ Cardullo 2008, p. 57.
  49. ^ Conrad 2022, pp. 157–160.
  50. ^ Conrad 2022, pp. 158, 163–164.
  51. ^ Conrad 2022, pp. 161–162.
  52. ^ Conrad 2022, p. 163.
  53. ^ Conrad 2022, pp. 163–164.
  54. ^ Bernstein 2000, pp. 179, 186–187.
  55. ^ Phillips 2021, pp. 16–17.
  56. ^ Phillips 2021, pp. 21–22, 24–25.
  57. ^ Phillips 2021, pp. 28–29.
  58. ^ Yoshimoto 2000, p. 318.
  59. ^ Yoshimoto 2000, pp. 321, 324.
  60. ^ Yoshimoto 2000, pp. 328, 331.
  61. ^ Goodwin 1994, pp. 58, 61–62.
  62. ^ Goodwin 1994, p. 168.
  63. ^ a b Deleuze 1983, p. 188.
  64. ^ Desser 1983, p. 138.
  65. ^ Desser 1983, p. 79.
  66. ^ Desser 1983, p. 98.
  67. ^ Kurosawa 2000, p. 30.
  68. ^ Galbraith 2002, pp. 293, 260.
  69. ^ a b MUBI.
  70. ^ BBFC.
  71. ^ a b Attanasio 1986.
  72. ^ a b Box Office Mojo.
  73. ^ Thomas 2002.
  74. ^ BFI 2023.
  75. ^ Richie 2001, p. 269.
  76. ^ Hunt 2013.
  77. ^ Guerrasio 2009.
  78. ^ Kendall 2005.
  79. ^ TheArtsShelf 2024.
  80. ^ Kinema Junpo 2012, p. 190.
  81. ^ Green 1963a, p. 9.
  82. ^ Green 1963b, p. 10.
  83. ^ Green 1963c, p. 10.
  84. ^ a b Green 1963d, p. 9.
  85. ^ Green 1964a, p. 10.
  86. ^ Green 1964b, p. 13.
  87. ^ Bock 1981.
  88. ^ Galbraith 2002, pp. 463–464, 468.
  89. ^ Bernstein 2000, p. 172.
  90. ^ Marsano 2023.
  91. ^ Oka 1963, pp. 55–56.
  92. ^ a b Crist 1968, pp. 36–40.
  93. ^ a b Mellen 1975, pp. 38–39.
  94. ^ Bernstein 2000, pp. 172–173.
  95. ^ Kauffmann 1968, pp. 383–384.
  96. ^ Time 1963, pp. 104–105.
  97. ^ Thompson 1963.
  98. ^ a b Thomas 1986.
  99. ^ Higham 1965, pp. 741–742.
  100. ^ Milne 1963, p. 178.
  101. ^ Vas 1967, p. 149.
  102. ^ Comolli 1963, p. 24.
  103. ^ Rotten Tomatoes.
  104. ^ Encyclopædia Brittanica.
  105. ^ Urquhart 2023.
  106. ^ Saab & Weinert 2022.
  107. ^ Galbraith 2002, pp. 359–360.
  108. ^ Parkinson 2006.
  109. ^ Tobias 2008.
  110. ^ Slant 2024.
  111. ^ Kozak 2024.
  112. ^ Bradshaw 2025.
  113. ^ Harada 1988, pp. 110–115.
  114. ^ Bell 2012.
  115. ^ Chapman 2024.
  116. ^ White 2025.
  117. ^ Mainichi Shimbun.
  118. ^ Golden Globes.
  119. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 361.
  120. ^ Wild 2014, p. 134.
  121. ^ Bock 1991, pp. 20, 23.
  122. ^ a b c Sharp 2023.
  123. ^ Prince 2011.
  124. ^ Wild 2014, p. 135.
  125. ^ O'Falt 2019.
  126. ^ Plainse 2022.
  127. ^ Molloy 2022.
  128. ^ Bowie-Sell 2011.
  129. ^ Amit 2020, p. 317.
  130. ^ Galbraith 2002, p. 359.
  131. ^ Lang 2023.
  132. ^ Caraan 2024.
  133. ^ Keslassy 2025.
  134. ^ Coats 2025.

Bibliography

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Books and articles

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  • Amit, Rea (2020). "Visions of Trans-Asian Orientalism: Indo-Japanese Cinematic Plagiarism, Misrepresentations, and Voluntary Blindness". In Centeno-Martin, Marcos P.; Morita, Norimasa (eds.). Japan Beyond its Borders: Transnational Approaches to Film and Media (PDF). Seibunsha. pp. 313–326. ISBN 978-4-901404-32-7.
  • Bernstein, Matthew (2000). "High and Low: Art Cinema and Pulp Fiction in Yokohama". In Naremore, James (ed.). Film Adaptation. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. pp. 172–189. ISBN 0-8135-2814-3.
  • Bock, Audie (1991). "The Moralistic Cinema of Kurosawa". In Chang, Kevin K.W. (ed.). Kurosawa: Perceptions on Life, An Anthology of Essays. Honolulu: Edward Enterprises. pp. 16–23.
  • Burch, Noël (1979). To the Distant Observer: Form and meaning in the Japanese cinema. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-03877-6.
  • Cardullo, Bert, ed. (2008). Akira Kurosawa: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-57806-996-5.
  • Conrad, David A. (2022). Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan. McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-1-4766-8674-5.
  • Crist, Judith (1968). The Private Eye, the Cowboy, and the Very Naked Girl: Movies from Cleo to Clyde (1st ed.). Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada. ISBN 978-0-03-072495-4.
  • Deleuze, Gilles (1983). Cinema 1: The Movement Image (5th ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1400-8.
  • Desser, David (1983). The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. ISBN 0-8357-1924-3.
  • Galbraith, Stuart IV (1996). The Japanese Filmography: 1900 through 1994. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0032-3.
  • Galbraith, Stuart IV (2002). The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune (1st ed.). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19982-8.
  • Goodwin, James (1994). Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-4661-7.
  • Hashimoto, Shinobu (2006). Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I. Translated by Hitchcock Morimoto, Lori. New York: Vertical (published 2015). ISBN 978-1-939130-58-7.
  • Itō, Nobuo (1976). 著作権事件100話: 側面からみた著作権発達史 [100 Episodes of Copyright Cases: A History of Copyright Development Seen from the Sidelines] (in Japanese). Copyright Material Association. ASIN B000J9J9MM.
  • Kauffmann, Stanley (1968). A World on Film: Criticism and Comment. New York: Delta Books. ISBN 978-0-8371-7188-3.
  • Kurosawa, Kazuko (2000). パパ、黒澤明 [Papa, Kurosawa Akira] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū. ISBN 978-4167656973.
  • Mellen, Joan (1975). Voices from the Japanese Cinema (1st ed.). New York: Liveright. ISBN 0-87140-604-7.
  • Nogami, Teruyo (2014). もう一度天気待ち 監督・黒澤明とともに [Once More Waiting on the Weather with Akira Kurosawa] (in Japanese). Sōshisha. ISBN 978-4-7942-2026-4.
  • Phillips, Mike (March 2021). "Through a Tube, Darkly: Critical Remediation in High and Low (1963)". Crime Fiction Studies. 2 (1). Edinburgh University Press: 15–31. doi:10.3366/CFS.2021.0031. ISSN 2517-7982.
  • Prince, Stephen (1991). The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa (Revised and Expanded ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01046-5.
  • Richie, Donald (1970). The Films of Akira Kurosawa (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-01781-1.
  • Richie, Donald (2001). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to Videos and DVDs (1st ed.). New York: Kodansha International. ISBN 4-7700-2682-X.
  • Wild, Peter (2014). Akira Kurosawa. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78023-343-7.
  • Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro (2000). Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-2519-5.

Magazines

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  • Comolli, Jean-Louis (October 1963). "Venise 63". Cahiers du Cinéma (in French). Vol. 148. ISSN 0008-011X.
  • Green, Abel, ed. (4 December 1963). "Broadway". Variety. Vol. 233, no. 2. p. 9. ISSN 0042-2738.
  • Green, Abel, ed. (11 December 1963). "Broadway". Variety. Vol. 233, no. 3. p. 10. ISSN 0042-2738.
  • Green, Abel, ed. (18 December 1963). "Broadway". Variety. Vol. 233, no. 4. p. 10. ISSN 0042-2738.
  • Green, Abel, ed. (25 December 1963). "Broadway". Variety. Vol. 233, no. 5. p. 9. ISSN 0042-2738.
  • Green, Abel, ed. (1 January 1964). "Broadway". Variety. Vol. 233, no. 6. p. 10. ISSN 0042-2738.
  • Green, Abel, ed. (15 January 1964). "Broadway". Variety. Vol. 233, no. 8. p. 13. ISSN 0042-2738.
  • Harada, Masaaki, ed. (23 May 1988). 新版戦後キネマ旬報ベストテン全史 [New Edition: Post-war Kinema Junpo Complete History of the Best Ten]. Kinema Junpo (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kinema Junpo Co., Ltd. ISSN 1342-5412.
  • Higham, Charles (Autumn 1965). "Kurosawa's Humanism". Kenyon Review. Vol. 27, no. 4. ISSN 0163-075X.
  • Inoue, Kazuo (15 March 1963). マクベインの原作と黒沢の映画 [McBain's Novel and Kurosawa's Film]. Kinema Junpo (in Japanese). Vol. Late March, no. 335. Tokyo: Kinema Junposha. ISSN 1342-5412.
  • "Kinema Junpo 85th Complete History of the Best Ten 1924–2011". Kinema Junpo (in Japanese). Kinema Junposha. 17 May 2012. ISBN 9784873767550.
  • Milne, Tom (Autumn 1963). "Venice". Sight and Sound. Vol. 32, no. 4. London: The British Film Institute. ISSN 0037-4806.
  • Oka, Toshio (15 March 1963). 「天国と地獄」・黒沢明の世界 ['High and Low' – The World of Akira Kurosawa]. Kinema Junpo (in Japanese). Vol. Late March, no. 335. Tokyo: Kinema Junposha. ISSN 1342-5412.
  • "A Yen for Yen". Time. Vol. 82, no. 22. Chicago: Time Inc. 29 November 1963. ISSN 0040-781X.
  • Vas, Robert (Summer 1967). "High and Low". Sight and Sound. London: The British Film Institute. ISSN 0037-4806.

Web

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Further reading

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[edit]
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