Kurosawa’s Film Noir: High And Low at Mercury Cinema – OzAsia Film Festival Review

[Japan] Mercury Cinema, Wed 23 Sep High And Low, one of famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s contemporary crime dramas, kicks off the three-film season of Kurosawa’s Film Noir, the cinematic highlight of this year’s OzAsia Festival. Released in 1963, it stars Toshirô Mifune, a Kurosawa regular, as the shoe company executive whose life is turned upside down as a result of a series of events brought on by some of the more negative aspects of human thinking and behaviour. The film shows, quite pointedly, how feelings of envy, perhaps even hatred, can be exacerbated when people existing at either end of the affluence continuum are living in close quarters. Despite running for 143 minutes, High And Low is a reasonably fast-paced tale. Especially early in the piece – the first hour or so is substantially set in one location, yet the story and the action skip along at a reasonable rate. The film is certainly a drama but is punctuated here and there by moments of comic relief, often delivered by Kenjirô Ishiyama in his role as ‘Bos’n’ Taguchi. All of the starring roles are excellently played; as well as Mifune’s portrayal as the man beset by woe, the performances of Tatsuya Nakadai as Chief Detective Tokura and Tsutomu Yamazaki as his nemesis are almost perfectly suited to the requirements of the film. The score is sparingly utilised but very effective. It strikes a balance between 1963 Japan and the kind of lurching jazz that fills the soundtracks of noir films hailing from the USA a few years earlier. Some of the photography, especially in and around Yokohama’s docks, is striking. The scene in the city’s drug alley is harrowing. On one level, this is a simple story, well told. There are many themes, however, that impose themselves - some quite lightly; others less so. Greed, ambition, jealousy, pride and betrayal all take turns in rising to the surface. There’s room also for notions of human redemption. High And Low has been touted as a Japanese Macbeth, and was inspired by the 1959 pulp novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain. Truth be told, the film contains elements of both and probably sits quite comfortably somewhere in between the two. David Robinson