Akira Kurosawa's use of contrasting mise-en-scène in High and Low is perhaps the most important contributing factor as to why his film is considered noir. In different parts of the film, Kurosawa shows the audience drastically different sets, ranging from a clean and luxurious living room to a slimy and dark drug alley. By first acclimating the audience to the comforts of luxury and then later illustrating the brutalities of everyday life, Kurosawa shocks the audience and conveys noir's powers of infiltration. The juxtaposition of shots of Gondo's immaculate home and of Tokyo's dark and dirty alleyways shows how the evil elements present in noir can penetrate even the most innocent of people's lives.

The first section of the movie takes places almost entirely in Gondo's living room. If one were to not see the complete film, one might think that it remained a sanitary and psychological thriller until the end. However, Kurosawa creates a stark dichotomy in the film after Gondo gives away the 30 million yen, when he shows the dark and gritty streets of Yokohama [ed. note: I mistakenly suggested in class that the film is set in Tokyo. This is incorrect. The city is Yokohama. --HM]. Gondo's home is very neat, with open spaces and high windows. The home nurtures a sense of openness and luxury that is disrupted when Shinichi is kidnapped. While the home does not physically change, Kurosawa adapts the mise-en-scène through placement to illustrate that an element of evil has infiltrated Gondo's world. When Gondo begins to work on the briefcases, he sits on the floor with all of his tools while the entire room stands looking down on him. This placement illustrates Gondo's fall from a place of prominence to a commoner status. His high windows now only serve to mock him as he is relegated to the floor. By manipulating the placement in this way, Kurosawa proves that criminal elements of film noir encompass even the rich and powerful.

The second part of the film displays a mise-en-scène that is more similar to classic film noir. As the police secretly follow Takeuchi through the crowded and steamy streets of the urban underworld, Kurosawa shows the smoky nightclubs that are ever-present in film noir. However, through the mise-en-scène Kurosawa also relates why Takeuchi hates Gondo. Takeuchi's hovel is cramped, compact, hot and dirty. He has a direct view of Gondo's mansion from his room, and the differences between their two worlds is apparent when one ponders that Takeuchi probably has to hide the money from the rats, as well as from the police. Yet Takeuchi is familiar with these surroundings, and is no stranger to the crime that encircles him. While Gondo may be oblivious to the hidden underbelly of Yokohama in his elevated castle, Takeuchi cannot help but understand it, for it surrounds him. Kurosawa uses mise-en-scène in order to quietly justify Takeuchi's actions in trying to escape from such a horrible environment.

In High and Low, Kurosawa proves that film noir plots do not only reside in gritty urban slums, but that they can infiltrate the high-class world as well. The conspiracies in film noir are so penetrating that they can even bring down a man who spends his whole life working for the right things, and tries to separate himself from the evils of the city. The dichotomy of mise-en-scène expresses that no one is ever safe from the evil world of film noir. To Kurosawa, everyone should be paranoid of crime, no matter how separated they appear to be.

One of noir’s primary narrative devices insists that the story’s protagonist experience a collapse of morality, integrity, and so on. In High and Low, Gondo, a shrewd businessman with visions of corporate take-over, undergoes a downfall in status, literally moving from a lavishly sparse, hilltop mansion to the congested, destitute streets below. Kurosawa externalizes this downward spiral through Gondo’s clothing and through signifying colors dominating each environment. For instance, he depicts Gondo’s living room in white and light grey tones; its owner predominantly wears white shirts and khaki pants. The panoramic full-wall windows overlooking the city afford bursts of blinding white light. The combination of these details evokes a sense of perfection--a comfortable, pristine existence--and establishes the height from which Gondo will ultimately fall.

The mise-en-scène constituting a later scene serves as a metaphorical bridge between the previous setting and the more harrowing locale to follow. After Gondo pays the ransom and loses his job, police officers discover him mowing his own lawn at the base level of the house. The sun shines luminously, and the city remains below Gondo’s immediate position. But a dark grey polo shirt and black slacks replace his white wardrobe. Large, profuse sweat pools stain much of the shirt, causing the threads to appear almost black. Gondo’s dark clothing and his relocation to the ground level clearly symbolize the middle effects of a greater descent.

Kurosawa provides the humbling period to Gondo’s sentence during the film’s climactic chase sequence. Tokura and his men observe the kidnapper weaving through the city’s seediest district, including the nightmarish, horror-inflected Doper’s Alley. Gondo appears window-shopping in this overpopulated, helter-skelter part of town. He wears a white dress shirt, but it lacks the luster characterizing his original get-up. Furthermore, he also wears black slacks and a black tie, and he carries in his arms a black suit coat. This outfit reflects the surrounding environment’s shadowy gloom, drawing comparisons between the city’s urban decay and Gondo’s internal suffering. For this reason, the suit resurfaces at the film’s dark epilogue, in which Gondo appears to regret his previous monetary excursions.




japan does america!  and well, too!
response by MUNCEY GRAYSON

High And Low uses a very American story and throws it in the midst of Yokohama, venturing from one end of the social spectrum to the opposite. This dichotomy is pulled off rather well by the very capable Akira Kurosawa through outstanding mise-en-scène.

One end of this spectrum is the Gondo home. It’s spacious, tidy, modern, and uses white throughout, showing an element of purity or taintlessness. Perched alone atop a hill over a poor section of the city, the Gondo home is a beacon drawing in the attention of all those pitiful souls below her. Underneath the flawless appearance of Gondo’s home lies the truth about the man who lives there. One quick shot cuts through the exterior and exemplifies the feelings of all the principal protagonists. Immediately after firing his assistant, Kingo Gondo slumps onto his oatmeal-colored Crate and Barrel ottoman and sits with his head hung low. On the left side of the shot stands three of the detectives and Aoki balanced against the other two detectives and Gondo’s wife, Reiko, on the right side of the shot. Everyone quietly stares at the dejected Gondo. The quick shot displays the actual nature of Gondo’s seemingly perfect life as desperate and lonely, and now revealed to everyone attempting to help him. His career has been ruined by the treachery, deceit, and vengeance of those he’s worked with for years.

If the division is drawn with the Gondo home as Heaven then surely Hell must be the terrifying, dark alley full of deadbeats, addicts, and homeless where the kidnapper goes to find heroin. A long shot of the kidnapper’s entrance into the alley provides many insights into the setting. Showing just how horrible the place must be, even the murdering, evil kidnapper is hesitant to enter. He pauses before going in and surveys the filth around him. Shadows bathe his path and fog sets in ahead of him. As bad as it is where he currently stands, the evil ahead of him is unimaginable. He hides behind one of the biggest pairs of sunglasses I’ve ever seen, probably hoping not to meet the eye of anyone who would call this place home.

Kurosawa’s High And Low is a great film filled with all sorts of dichotomies and noir elements. The simplicity of the story accompanied by the complexity of the mise-en-scène and the acting show just how well Kurosawa could direct and perfect many Hollywood film techniques. Ironically the film was distributed in the U.S. by Janus Films. In Roman mythology Janus is the god of doors and gates, signified by a head with two faces--one looking the opposite direction of the other. He is an illustration of various binaries such as war and peace, barbaric ways of life and civilized society, rural and urban, and youth and experience--essentially, a dichotomy in one being. Finally, you have to wonder: like Michael Jackson dangling his baby over the balcony clearly having been derived from the opening of The Lion King, did George Lucas get the idea for the name of the often-referred-to “Beggar’s Canyon” in Star Wars from High And Low’s "Dope Alley" scene? Kind of makes you wonder….




kurosawa's studied contrasts of mise-en-scène in high and low
response by THE INIQUITOUS FRASER 'FUZZY' McGUFFIN

Known as "Dope Alley," the local crack zombie hangout displays the dirty extreme of the film. The high contrast lighting throws everything into deep shadows, and the use of corrugated aluminum makes for the perfect object for the soon-to-be-dead, sacrificial dope monkey to claw against--the aluminum indicates a sense of cheapness and only temporary shelter, as opposed to the stone that composes Gondo’s house on a hill. Even the hideout of the accomplices to the kidnapping is made of less sturdy or permanent material, bamboo possibly. The windows of this place are only covered with sheets and the floors with woven-reed mats, again in contrast to Gondo’s glass windows and carpeting. The irony is that Gondo’s supposedly more secure place in the world (and actual sturdier home) is ripped away from him by those with less to lose.

The dichotomy of mise-en-scène is evidenced especially by the Gondos’ residence. The pristine white, “Western”-style home perches atop a rise above the city, granting a lovely and spacious view from the living room’s huge picture windows; namely, of the hovels spreading out below. A broad, desolate field separates the rich man’s home and/from the poorer people’s. The kidnapper’s bedroom/living room window affords a magnificent view of what is practically a mansion in comparison. Also, the shots at Gondo’s are wider, encompassing the space that the characters are free to move in, whereas everywhere else, the shots are tighter and closer to the characters, emphasizing the entrapment and claustrophobia that they experience.

Another striking example of the film’s visual style is the scene between Gondo and the kidnapper, Takeuchi, with the latter now on death row because of his crimes. A fence separates them, with a pane of glass on Gondo’s side. This allows the pane to reflect the other’s image when one is shown in a close-up, with the image of the fence also shown or reflected. The effect is haunting; these two men are connected through misfortune and despair, and now neither can escape.




may your heaven be hell
response by V. OHIBA ROSE

So when a man sets out to topple an imposing ivory tower, hoping to send it crashing into its own image reflected on the brackish quagmire of the urban ghetto, beware: the tower is more firmly rooted, powerful in what distance it has from heaven and justice on its side. When the malevolent kidnapper of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 effort High and Low delivers the lines, “You’re on a hilltop. It’s hot as hell down here,” the establishment of a dichotomous relationship between the literal “high” and “low” facets of society, architecture, and personality are bridged via axiomatic mise-en-scène; opposing themes and environments are forced to acknowledge, if not grudgingly befriend one another, in this consummate film noir.

If the heart of film noir hinges on criminal psychology, the stark goings-on of the underworld, and sadistic violence, what would the effect be of a blatant juxtaposition of the direct opposite? With High and Low we see both worlds--the bright symmetry of Gondo’s palatial house on the hill (success, happiness, and health); the dopers hideout bathed in black flowing drapes (death afloat). By placing these polar opposites on screen, Kurosawa intensifies the bleak world of the criminal insane, exploiting the vast heart of darkness in which film noir thrives.

Consider:
The Symmetry of the Rich: all right angles, spotless, the squared window sills, and the airy openness.
The Disharmony of the Criminal/Poor/Dope Fiend: clutter, the dilapidation, the broken televisions stacked upon each other, with no hope for repair. The train is a segue for the wealthy travelling into the intense world of the deprived and criminally insane. The tight cramped spaces: the phone booth, the dance hall. The black tar quality of Dope Alley.

So the rich get rich, and the poor get even, or die trying.

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