One sign of Akira Kurosawa’s genius is his ability to make a 143-minute (in this case) film feel compact and efficient whether the subject is Edo period daimyo warfare or Japan, Inc. intrigue or gritty, urban crime. His brilliance in scene construction, pacing, and technical craftsmanship shine brightly in Tengoku to jigoku (US: High and Low), but equally impressive is the film’s moral scope, the conflict facing protagonist Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) on the scale of Greek tragedy, the theme of postwar class conflict as much in the background as Mount Fuji. Based on a novel by American crime author Evan Hunter, using the pen name Ed McBain, Tengoku to jigoku is a film that could be seen as unfolding in three Dantean acts: descending from heaven (Gondo’s brightly lit, wide-angled, high-rise apartment where he learns his son has been kidnapped) to earth (where the child is recovered after a thrilling train ride) to hell (where sweating, zombie-like addicts assemble in Dope Alley and dealers end up in prison). The relief Gondo and his wife Reiko (Kyōko Kagawa) feel when they learn the kidnapper snatched the wrong boy is short-lived as it becomes clear the actual victim was the little son of his chauffer Aoki (Yutaka Sada); having just mortgaged all of his assets toward a leveraged buyout of his company, Gondo will lose everything if he pays the ¥30 million ransom for the disconsolate Aoki (“I’d be as good as dead”). Down on the ground (the “low”) is where Kurosawa and his cinematographers become visually inventive, incorporating high angles and low-key lighting, props like sunglasses and bamboo blinds used to manipulate light to almost futuristic effect, the color pink even briefly invading the B&W film as an almost supernatural presence.