Tengoku to jigoku (1963)

Director:

Akira Kurosawa

Writers:

Hideo Oguni (screenplay) &
Ryûzô Kikushima (screenplay) ...
(more)

Release Date:

26 November 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

Plot:

An executive of a shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped and held for ransom.

Plot Keywords:

Ransom | Shoe | Chauffeur | Police | Suicide Attempt

Awards:

3 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Toshirô Mifune	...	Kingo Gondo
Tatsuya Nakadai	...	Chief Detective Tokura
Kyôko Kagawa	...	Reiko Gondo
Tatsuya Mihashi	...	Kawanishi - Gondo's Secretary
Isao Kimura	...	Detective Arai
Kenjirô Ishiyama	...	Chief Detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi
Takeshi Katô	...	Detective Nakao
Takashi Shimura	...	Chief of Investigation Section
Jun Tazaki	...	Kamiya, National Shoes Publicity Director
Nobuo Nakamura	...	Ishimaru, National Shoes Design Department Director
Yûnosuke Itô	...	Baba - National Shoes Executive
Tsutomu Yamazaki	...	Ginjirô Takeuchi - Medical Intern
Minoru Chiaki	...	First Reporter
Eijirô Tôno	...	Factory Worker
Masao Shimizu	...	Prison Warden
Yutaka Sada	...	Aoki - the Chauffeur
Masahiko Shimazu	...	Shinichi Aoki
Toshio Egi	...	Jun Gondo
Kôji Mitsui	...	Second Reporter
Kyû Sazanka	...	First Creditor
Susumu Fujita	...	Chief of First Investigating Section
Kamatari Fujiwara	...	Junkyard Cook
Yoshio Tsuchiya	...	Detective Murata
Kazuo Kitamura	...	Third Reporter
Gen Shimizu	...	Chief Physician
Akira Nagoya	...	Detective Yamamoto
Jun Hamamura	...	Second Creditor
Masao Oda	...	First Executor at Tax Office (as Masao Orita)
Kô Nishimura	...	Third Creditor
Yoshifumi Tajima	...	Chief Prison Officer
Koji Kiyomura	...	Fish Market Office Worker (as Kôji Kiyomura)
Hiroshi Unayama	...	Detective Shimada
Yoshisuke Makino	...	Detective Takahashi
Jun Kondô	...	Identification Center Worker
Satoshi Suzuki	...	Detective Koike
Senkichi Ômura	...	Messenger Passing Note to Intern
Kazuo Katô	...	Identification Center Worker
Ikio Sawamura	...	Yokohama Station Trolley Man
Kin Sugai	...	Female Drug Addict
Keiko Tomita	...	Murder Victim
Isao Onoda	...	Male Drug Addict
Seiichi Taguchi	...	Detective Nakamura
Takeo Matsushita	...	Second Executor at Tax Office
Kiyoshi Yamamoto	...	Detective Ueno
Kenji Kodama	...	Detective Hara
Minoru Itô	...	Detective
Haruo Suzuki	...	Undercover Detective 'Drug Addict'
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kôzô Nomura	...	Detective (uncredited)

Directed by
Akira Kurosawa

Writing credits
Hideo Oguni		(screenplay) &
Ryûzô Kikushima		(screenplay) &
Eijirô Hisaita		(screenplay) &
Akira Kurosawa		(screenplay)
Evan Hunter		(novel "Kingu no minoshirokin") (as Edo Makubein)

Produced by
Ryûzô Kikushima	....	producer
Akira Kurosawa	....	associate producer
Tomoyuki Tanaka	....	producer

Original Music by
Masaru Satô

Cinematography by
Asakazu Nakai
Takao Saitô

Production Design by
Yoshirô Muraki

Costume Design by
Miyuki Suzuki

Production Management
Hiroshi Nezu	....	production supervisor

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Masanobu Deme	....	assistant director
Yôichi Matsue	....	assistant director
Shirô Moritani	....	chief assistant director
Kenjirô Ohmori	....	assistant director

Art Department
Jun Sakuma	....	assistant art director

Sound Department
Ichirô Minawa	....	sound effects editor
Jin Sashida	....	sound assistant
Hisashi Shimonaga	....	sound mixer
Fumio Yanoguchi	....	sound

Camera and Electrical Department
Fukahirô Akike	....	assistant lighting technician
Masao Fukuda	....	still photographer
Kazutami Hara	....	assistant camera
Ichirô Inohara	....	lighting technician
Katsuhiro Kato	....	assistant camera
Hiromitsu Mori	....	lighting technician

Editorial Department
Reiko Kaneko	....	assistant editor

Transportation Department
Ginzo Osumi	....	transportation coordinator

Other crew
Shigeru Kishima	....	production assistant
Teruyo Nogami	....	script supervisor
Yuichi Yoshitake	....	acting office

Production Companies

• Kurosawa Production Co.
• Toho Company

Distributors

• Toho Company (1963) (Japan) (theatrical)
• East West Classics (1963) (worldwide) (all media)
• Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI) (1968) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• Palace Video (1983) (UK) (VHS)
• Criterion Collection, The (1998) (USA) (DVD)
• Pacific Arts Video (1988) (USA) (VHS)
• Cowboy Pictures (2002) (USA) (theatrical) (re-release)
• Continental Home Vídeo (2003) (Brazil) (DVD)
• Criterion Collection, The (2004) (USA) (DVD)
• trigon-film (2006) (Switzerland) (DVD)
• trigon-film (2006) (Switzerland) (theatrical)
• Criterion Collection, The (2008) (USA) (DVD)
• Madman Entertainment (2006) (Australia) (DVD)
• Madman Entertainment (2006) (New Zealand) (DVD)
• Sandrews (2009) (Sweden) (DVD)
• Continental Distributing (196?) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• Janus Films (????) (USA) (theatrical)
• Walter Reade-Sterling (????) (USA) (theatrical) (re-release)
• Connoisseur Video (????) (UK) (VHS)
• Criterion Collection, The (2009) (USA) (DVD)
• Criterion Collection, The (2011) (USA) (DVD) (Blu-ray)
• Sandrews (2005) (Sweden) (DVD)
• Toho Company (USA)

Other Companies

• Kyoto Costumes  costumes
• Toho Studios  sound stages

Also Known As:

"High and Low" - International (English title), UK, USA
"Heaven and Hell" - International (English title) (literal title)
"The Ransom" - UK
"Anatomia di un rapimento" - Italy
"Céu E Inferno" - Brazil
"El cielo y el infierno" - Argentina
"El infierno del odio" - Spain
"Entre le ciel et l'enfer" - France
"Himmel och helvete" - Sweden
"Himmel og helvede" - Denmark
"Le paradis et l'enfer" - France
"Menny és pokol" - Hungary (imdb display title)
"Niebo i pieklo" - Poland
"O dolofonos tou Tokyo" - Greece (transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title)
"Zwischen Himmel und Hölle" - West Germany

Runtime:

USA:143 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White | Color (Eastmancolor) (inserts only)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Australia:PG | Argentina:13 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Switzerland:12 | UK:12 | UK:A (original rating) (cut)

Filming Locations:

Enoshima, Kanagawa, Japan

Company:

Kurosawa Production Co.

Trivia:

The original Japanese title for the film was "Heaven and Hell."

Quotes:

Reiko Gondo:[to her husband, about their son Jun] He takes after you. He likes violent games.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Odoru daisosasen (1998)

Soundtrack:

It's Now or Never

About the best police procedural you're ever likely to see

Toshiro Mifune is a businessman in a Japan that is on the brink of the Economic Miracle of the Sixties. He is an honest man who loves his job as a shoe factory exec and is in a battle for corporate control against a pack of hyenas. He has mortgaged and borrowed and scraped to raise the money for a surprise coup when his son is kidnapped. But there is a major plot twist: it is not HIS son that was taken but his son's playmate, the chauffeur's kid and the ransom demanded is astronomical. If he pays he will lose everything he has worked so hard for, but can he just sacrifice the chauffeur's child because it is not his? From here on High and Low (perhaps better translated as Heaven and Hell) is a police procedural based on an Ed McBain 87th precinct story.

Watching this film I had a rare, almost unique, experience. I saw it on a fairly screen tv, letterboxed, in a darkened room. All the preceding conditions helped contribute to put me into an objective/subjective middle ground where I had the feeling of looking through a special visor that allowed me to see the world by means of an almost perfect film as if through the eyes of a cinematic genius who is in total command of his artistic means and in total command of his subject matter. I think the key to this experience is that while High and Low is interesting as human drama, it is yet peculiarly uninvolving emotionally but very involving cinematically. These distances are important in Kurosawa's films (he is high on my list of top ten directors but after Welles). In IKIRU you probably could not be more deeply involved emotionally, while in RAN there is nothing but relentless distance.

I think a good companion film to watch with this would be Kurosawa's earlier, looser, but much more individually tense, police film STRAY DOG (this time Mifune is the cop)