Blah, blah, blah… Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven by John Sturges in 1960… Yackety smackety… Yojimbo served as the inspiration for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars… Blah, blah, blah… George Lucas ripped off The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars… Yackety smackety… etc.

No, I haven’t gone mad. I just want to roll out every tiresome truism regarding Akira Kurosawa that apparently MUST be acknowledged every time his name comes up in conversation, and get them out of the way. It’s always seemed a bit like damning with so much faint praise to me that one of the towering talents in cinema history is as good as condemned to be mentioned merely as a source of inspiration for lesser filmmakers (of the above films he inspired, only A Fistful of Dollars matches the original). So today we’re not going to be talking about a Kurosawa film that has been “borrowed” by anyone else, at least not as far as I’m aware. Today we’re going to have a look at a Kurosawa film that is often overlooked in a filmography that is as high in quality as it is in number; High and Low.

Perhaps it would be somewhat unfair of me, after bemoaning how Kurosawa is mainly regarded for having others borrow from him, to neglect to mention that the Japanese master was not shy of drawing inspiration from elsewhere himself. Indeed, a huge fan of western literature, Kurosawa both filmed Dostoevsky (The Idiot) and adapted Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Throne of Blood) during his 50s golden period. And while it is apparently against the law to mention Yojimbo without acknowledging that it provided the story for A Fistful of Dollars (and later Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing), it is less well known that Kurosawa himself found that very same story in Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel, Red Harvest.

Filmed in 1963, two years after Yojimbo, High and Low sees Kurosawa again turning to an American crime writer for his source material, this time Ed McBain, and his story King’s Ransom. Unlike Red Harvest, however, King’s Ransom is not traditional gangster-based noir, and belongs more to the police procedural genre; fiction which covers in exacting detail exactly how the police go about solving mysterious crimes. These stories proved very popular in Japan throughout the 50s and 60s, and High and Low appears to be the best example of a filmed version.

Very much a film of two halves, the first portion of High and Low tells the story of Kingo Gondo, an ambitious executive for an established shoe manufacturer. Gondo is engaged in a heated battle to wrest control of the lucrative business off his incompetent fellow executives, and has staked all of his worldly possessions on a buyout of the company. Just as he’s about to clinch the deal, however, disaster strikes. A kidnapper has taken his son and demanded an impossibly high ransom. This means that Gondo must give everything he has painstakingly gathered together for his buyout, and more, to get his son back, plunging his family and his business into financial ruin at the very same time. It IS a price he is willing to pay, of course, at least until it transpires that the kidnappers picked up the wrong boy. Rather than snatch his son, who has been secretly, safely at home throughout the initial panic, they have taken the child of Gondo’s lowly chauffeur. This presents an even greater dilema for the shrewd and ruthless Gondo; does he give up his whole world in order to save another man’s son?

I’m not going to tell you anymore, as it is a powerful first-half that Kurosawa plays with typical brilliance. Without revealing the outcome of the kidnapping, part two follows the police in their attempts to uncover the crooks behind the plot, and although police procedurals differ in several aspects to straight-up film noir, the unravelling of the mystery in High and Low proves as smoky and coolly an existentsial delight as anything it’s sister genre could come up with.

As previously mentioned, Kurosawa’s classic period is undeniably the 1950s, during which time he made several of cinema’s all time classics, beginning with Rashomon at the very start of the decade. It is his films of the 50s which he is most famous for, and the majority of those films can be described as medieval epics, set in Japan during the age of feudalism; Seven Samurai being the most celebrated example. Look either side of that decade, however, and there are still many incredible Kurosawa films to choose from. Another one I’m very fond of is 1949′s Stray Dog, another drama in the police procedural mould and, like High and Low, it also proves that Kurosawa doesn’t have to deliver samurai swords ‘n’ sandals to come up with a classic. The seamy, sinister and uncertain world of post-war Japan provides an equally emotionally charged and turbulent battlefield for the master to deliver his trademark technically flawless, high-impact dramas.

As with most classic Kurosawa, High and Low also boasts an appearance by the iconic, enigmatic Toshiro Mifune, excellent here as the unfortunate Kingo Gondo. One of the great actor/director partnerships, Mifune/Kurosawa are as effective a partnership as De Niro/Scorsese, as elegant as Von Sydow/Bergman, and as enduring as Woody Allen and, erm, himself. Mifune always burns up the screen, and here he is in turns prickly, intense and sly. He also manages a credible and convincing change of character in the film’s second half, helping to provide Kurosawa with a finale that is both chilling and utterly raw. You’re going to have to watch High and Low to find out what happens, and I High-ly recommend that you do.

Have a look here at the snazzy and unusual US trailer, which helpfully doesn’t give too much away.

Tags akira kurosawa film of the day high and low japanese cinema toshiro mifune