High and Low High and Low

High and Low

Akira Kurosawa

 
High and Low (Criterion Blu-Ray)

Blu-Ray

1 Disc

SRP: $39.95

Criterion Store price:$31.96

+ Add to Cart
  • Japan
  • 1963
  • 143 minutes
  • Black and White
  • 2.35:1
  • Japanese
  •  
  • Spine #24

Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

Cast

Kingo GondoToshiro Mifune
ReikoKyoko Kagawa
KawanishiTatsuya Mihashi
Inspector TokuroTatsuya Nakadai
AokiYutaka Sada
DirectorTakashi Shimura
CommissionerSusumu Fujita
Detective TaguchiKenjiro Ishiyama
Detective AraiKo Kimura
Detective NakaoTakeshi Kato

Disc Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with original four-track surround sound, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary by Akira Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
  • Thirty-seven minute documentary on the making of High and Low, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
  • Rare video interview with actor Toshiro Mifune, from 1984
  • New video interview with actor Tsutomu Yamazaki
  • Theatrical trailers and teaser
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and an on-set account by Japanese film-scholar Donald Richie

    New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Film Essays

High and Low: Between Heaven and Hell

By Geoffrey O’BrienJuly 21, 2008

Akira Kurosawa’s propensity for adapting European classics—Dostoyevsky (The Idiot), . . . Read more »


Film Essays

High and Low

By Chuck StephensOctober 12, 1998

Are there cultural purists still remaining who would argue that the “Westernized” title of . . . Read more »

News

Higher and Lower: Nichols Takes Up a Classic

October 27, 2008

Variety reported today that Mike Nichols is getting ready to direct a remake of Akira Kurosawa . . . Read more »


Film Essays

High and Low: Between Heaven and Hell

By Geoffrey O’BrienJuly 21, 2008

Akira Kurosawa’s propensity for adapting European classics—Dostoyevsky (The Idiot), . . . Read more »


Film Essays

High and Low

By Chuck StephensOctober 12, 1998

Are there cultural purists still remaining who would argue that the “Westernized” title of . . . Read more »