天国と地獄 aka High and Low (1963) Japanese Police Procedural Noir

"one of the best detective thrillers ever filmed" (NY Times)


Directed masterfully by Akira Kurosawa.

"For me, film-making combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film." (Akira Kurosawa)

Written by Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, Eijirô Hisaita, and Akira Kurosawa and is based partly on the 1959 novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter).
The excellent cinematography by Asakazu Nakai and Takao Saitô. Music by Masaru Satô.

Toshirô Mifune as Kingo Gondo center

The film stars Toshirô Mifune as Kingo Gondo, Tatsuya Nakadai as Chief Detective Tokura, Kyôko Kagawa as Reiko Gondo, Tsutomu Yamazaki as Ginjirô Takeuchi - Medical Intern, Tatsuya Mihashi as  Kawanishi - Gondo's Secretary,  Isao Kimura as Detective Arai, Kenjirô Ishiyama as Chief Detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi,  Takeshi Katô as Detective Nakao, Yutaka Sada as Aoki - the Chauffeur, Masahiko Shimazu as Shinichi Aoki, Toshio Egi as Jun Gondo, and Yokohama.

Tatsuya Nakadai (Chief Detective Tokura) Kenjiro Ishiyama as Chief Detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi and Gondo

Tsutomu Yamazaki as Ginjirô Takeuchi - Medical Intern

Gondo wants to make a play for control of the shoe company he works for. He's disgusted with some of their proposals to cut costs and make cheap shoes. He assembles some executive stockholders he trusts to plan his leveraged buyout.

Before any of his plans can be put in place, he gets a call that his son Jun has been kidnapped and gets a demand for ransom money. Gondo calls in the police. When Jun shows up at the house Gondo realizes that his son's playmate Shinichi (the son of his chauffeur Aoki) has been abducted instead. It doesn't matter the kidnapper still demands money. But Gondo has no money because he's mortgaged everything he owns.

Kyôko Kagawa as Reiko Gondo and Gondo

Under pressure from his wife and Aoki, Gondo decides to pay the ransom. Doing so will guarantee his loss of position in the company where he has spent the greater part of his life. The whole set up of Gondo's family life, his ambitions, his relationships at the beginning takes quite a bit of film running time to play out.

The film kicks into second gear once Ginjirô calls and details to Gondo how to deliver the ransom money. From there the film breaks free of the stark minimalist setting of Gondo's house and we are treated to an abbondanza of Japanese locations all plaited beautifully into a neat chronicle of methodical police investigation.

Most of the action takes place in Yokohama, but the kidnapper's hideout is in Kamakura. The sound that provides a clue to the police to that location, from the electric lead on the train scraping against a wire as the car banks, comes from Enoden. A friend of mine who rode the trolley everyday for nine years confirms this.

The Money Drop

The police film the money drop

There is a lot going on in this Kurosawa masterpiece, some politics, some social commentary, and even some humor.

At one point two of the detectives on the case joke to each other about trying not to look like cops while they are on their investigation. One detective tells the other something along the lines of for me it will be easy not to look like a cop, for you it would take plastic surgery.

Another humorous sequence involves Aoki and Shinichi doing their own investigation and coincidentally from two different leads ending up at the same house where Shinichi was held. The discovery of "Auntie" and "Uncle" the two accomplices of Ginjirô deliberately murdered from 100% pure heroin overdoses shifts the film again this time into Noirsville.

Noirsville

Yutaka Sada as Aoki

Tail Fins

Tail Fins

Tail Fins

One of the great Film Noirs, Bravo! Screencaps from a recent TCM streamer. 10/10