High and Low (1963)

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shadowgigan
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High and Low (1963)

Post by shadowgigan »

Haven't seen a thread for this movie yet, forgive me if it already exists.

I just finished this Kurosawa masterpiece. As a big fan of noir and crime flicks, High and Low hits every chord. Kurosawa's storytelling had me on the edge of my seat during this film. The ending is unlike anything I have seen before. Im not sure if "plot twist" is the right word, but my expectations going into the final scene were definitely subverted. Later on I plan to write a more formal summary of my thoughts.

Anyone else enjoy this movie?

Edit: Mifune was great in this film. The kidnapper was fantastic during the final scene. I also enjoyed the detective, who reminds me of Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks.
Last edited by shadowgigan on Tue May 26, 2020 11:55 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Spuro »

This one I sadly haven't seen, but it's high on my to-watch list.

Actually looking at my to-buy list I have written down, it appears to be the second-next Criterion bluray I'm aiming for, after Del Toro's Cronos. Criterion disks are expensive though, and here in Canada they take well over a month to arrive, so that won't be for a while...

How does this movie compare to Stray Dog? I admit that one was the only Kurosawa film to disappoint me so far.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Terasawa »

Simply put, one of (if not the) best police procedurals, although it's certainly more than just a cop film. The train sequence is likewise one of the most suspenseful set pieces I can think of in any film.

The use of...
Spoiler:
color
...in the one scene really shocked me the first time I saw it; I later saw it with an engaged theatrical audience and there were some gasps and light applause. That's a trick that Kurosawa set up perfectly and it pays off in such a big way.
Spoiler:
I have to think Spielberg got his idea of the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List from this movie.
This would probably be Kurosawa's masterpiece if only he hadn't made so many god damn of them. :P
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by eabaker »

I love High and Low. It definitely ranks high among my favorite Kurosawa films, but my favorite Kurosawa films is a long list.

This is one of a couple of cases where he splits a move down the middle, with the first and second halves having juxtaposed settings and perspectives. Here, the first half has a kind of intimate tension, which builds to a (structurally daring) mid-movie emotional climax, and there's an amazing sense of relief when we break out of the tight confines of the Gondo household move into the intense, active city-wide procedural section.

The push-pull rhythm that Kurosawa often implied is here writ large, a single, slow, prolonged pull for an hour followed by an equally long, frantic push.

The original Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) novel, King's Ransom, interweaves those threads, as well as a third focusing on the kidnappers. I don't think that aproach would have made for nearly as compelling a film, though. The compulsion to not just find, but understand the criminal contributes a lot to the movie.

Really, Kurosawa's humanism has a distinct transformative impact on the story, most obviously in the movie's King Gondo making a very different moral decision than the book's Douglas King. Here, Hunter is perhaps more realistic than the idealistic Kurosawa, who is using the story to impart a clear (though not simplistic) moral lesson. And there's a little bit more contrivance and luck involved in resolving the situation in the novel. I suppose one could say, then, that Kurosawa made the story both less realistic and yet more plausible?
Last edited by eabaker on Tue May 26, 2020 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Terasawa »

The lame as hell original English title:

Resized Image
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by G-Matt »

H&L became my #1 favorite Kurosawa movie right after the first viewing. It's a very damn near perfect crime thriller, consisting of two pretty distinct halves, like others here have stated. The first half is a stakeout, while the second half is more of a traditional cop/detective case, which I'm sure me and my father both thought was kind of similar to the CSI shows. The acting is excellent, with the always great Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai stealing the show for me, and like with Kurosawa's other widescreen movies, the cinematography is brilliantly executed.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by CrimsonBloodX »

I have seen High and Low when it was being shown on TCM, but that was only once and it was, I think, 4 years ago. I really need to watch it again, but I do remember liking it a lot.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by The Killer Meteor »

Some music in this film later appeared in EBIRAH, when Godzilla fights the jets.

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Re: High and Low (1963)

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The Killer Meteor wrote: Mon Feb 15, 2021 7:33 am Some music in this film later appeared in EBIRAH, when Godzilla fights the jets.
The song "The Magic Begins" from The H-Man is also heard in High and Low as Yamazaki's character approaches the nightclub.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

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The Killer Meteor wrote: Mon Feb 15, 2021 7:33 am Some music in this film later appeared in EBIRAH, when Godzilla fights the jets.
-head explodes-

How the hell did I miss that when I watched this movie?
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Arbok »

The deeper you go into Masaru Sato's music, the more you realize he had a tendency to just reuse themes here and there. Not how Ifukube would re-orchestrate a theme here and there, but literally just reuse the older track. It's almost like an easter egg.

Epoch of Murder Madness, Ebirah, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Sword of Doom... I wouldn't say the practice covered a bulk of his work, but there are still a number of Sato soundtracks that lift music from his earlier scores.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Terasawa »

Arbok wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:53 pm The deeper you go into Masaru Sato's music, the more you realize he had a tendency to just reuse themes here and there. Not how Ifukube would re-orchestrate a theme here and there, but literally just reuse the older track. It's almost like an easter egg.

Epoch of Murder Madness, Ebirah, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Sword of Doom... I wouldn't say the practice covered a bulk of his work, but there are still a number of Sato soundtracks that lift music from his earlier scores.
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is a good example because, in addition to reusing tracks from SoG and Judo Saga, Sato also reworked and further developed his Okinawan music from Battle of Okinawa for GvMG's main title.

At ~10 minutes into this video:


There are also some slight similarities between that melody and his main theme for Samurai Pirate.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Rando Yaguchi »

This, Ikiru and Seven Samurai are my three favorite Kurosawa films, and they're all very different in style and subject matter. He was such a versatile filmmaker.

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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by eabaker »

Rando Yaguchi wrote: Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:45 pm This, Ikiru and Seven Samurai are my three favorite Kurosawa films, and they're all very different in style and subject matter. He was such a versatile filmmaker.
Outstanding choices. I don't think I could narrow down a top three Kurosawa flicks, but add in Stray Dog, Rashomon and Yojimbo, and I guess that would round out to my top 6.

It's interesting that both Yojimbo and High and Low are rooted in American crime novels (Red Harvest and King's Ransom, respectively), but were approached from such different directions.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Rando Yaguchi »

eabaker wrote: Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:57 pm Outstanding choices. I don't think I could narrow down a top three Kurosawa flicks, but add in Stray Dog, Rashomon and Yojimbo, and I guess that would round out to my top 6.
I love those three as well - I've only seen them once each, but I did just get the Criterion Blu-ray of Rashomon in the mail today, so a rewatch is in order. I think of Yojimbo as his most "perfect" film, in the sense that every single scene is so well-executed.

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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Spuro »

Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Ran and Ikiru are probably my favorites. Clearly I have a weakness for Kurosawa's samurai stuff. High and Low was up there for sure, though.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Rando Yaguchi »

Kaiju-King42 wrote: Tue Mar 09, 2021 4:30 pmClearly I have a weakness for Kurosawa's samurai stuff.
Can't blame ya, his period films are epic!
Terasawa wrote: Tue May 26, 2020 2:08 pm The lame as hell original English title:
Yeah, "The Ransom" is pretty unimaginative.

The original Japanese title is Heaven and Hell, which is a little ham-fisted IMO. High and Low is the perfect name for the film because of its triple meaning: 1) economically: high society and low society; 2) geographically: Gondo's house high on the hill and the kidnapper's home low in the slums; and 3) the police searching high and low for the kidnapper. :)

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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by eabaker »

Rando Yaguchi wrote: Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:58 pm The original Japanese title is Heaven and Hell, which is a little ham-fisted IMO.
I love Kurosawa, he's probably my pick for greatest filmmaker of all time, but if we're being honest... nobody ever accused him of an excess of subtlety.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

Post by Rando Yaguchi »

Yeah, it seems Kurosawa had a tendency toward heavy-handedness and sentimentality, which is why he surrounded himself with writers like Hideo Oguni who had opposite tendencies and could reign him in when he went too far. Ikiru would have ended up being far more mawkish and conventional if it weren't for Oguni.
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Re: High and Low (1963)

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Excellent spoiler-free video examining three blocking techniques in High and Low.
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