Between Heaven and Hell (1963)

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Movie
German title Between heaven and hell
Original title Tengoku to Jigoku
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1963
length 143 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Akira Kurosawa
script Eijirô Hisaita ,
Ryuzo Kikushima,
Akira Kurosawa,
Hideo Oguni ,
translation of the original: Hayakawa Shobo
production Ryuzo Kikushima
Tomoyuki Tanaka
music Masaru Satō
camera Asakazu Nakai ,
Takao Saitō
cut Akira Kurosawa
occupation

Between Heaven and Hell (original title: 天国 と 地獄 , Tengoku to Jigoku , literally "Heaven and Hell") is a film by Akira Kurosawa from 1963. It is based on the detective novel Kings Ransom (original title: King's Ransom ) by Ed McBain . The film was shot in black and white with Cinemascope . Toshirō Mifune took on one of the leading roles.

action

Yokohama : Well-to-do shoe manufacturer Kingo Gondo receives a phone call that his son has been kidnapped and that he should pay 30 million yen to release him. Accidentally, however, it is not Gondo's son who is kidnapped, but the son of his chauffeur. After various considerations and conflicts of conscience, the manager pays the high ransom - although he actually needs it to secure his own position in the company, where a violent power struggle is taking place. Shinichi, the chauffeur's son, is eventually released, but the kidnapper and his accomplices escape the police.

Since Gondo loses money in the intrigues in the company because of the lack of money, he is finally fired. At the same time, he is a hero and benefactor in public opinion, having paid for the chauffeur's son himself. He himself gets into financial difficulties, creditors and bailiffs come into the house. The company he helped build is being punished by calls for a boycott by the press. Therefore the shoe company tries to bring Gondo back, but he doesn't want to be a puppet for the company bosses and opens his own little shoe factory.

Meanwhile, the kidnapper, a medical student by the name of Ginjirô Takeuchi, is anxiously watching the newspaper report on the progress of the search. He gives pure heroin to two drug addicts who have acted as his abduction accomplices , so that they remain silent and not betray him. The drug addicts are found dead in the hut by the police. But fake newspaper reports lure the kidnapper into a trap: Takeuchi believes that his accomplices are still alive and goes back to their hut, whereupon he is arrested. Takeuchi, sentenced to death, does not ask for a priest as his last wish, but wishes to speak to Gondo. He wants to make it clear to him that the discrepancy between the misery in which the kidnapper lived and the idyllic house of the manager, which could be seen on the hill ("heaven") above the poor district ("hell"), gave him the idea brought about this kidnapping. At first, Takeuchi appears tidy and fearless before the execution, but finally has to be led away screaming and fearful by the prison guards.

Reviews

“'Between Heaven and Hell' (…) is one of the most impressive, non-historical films by Kurosawa. Since kidnapping is treated as a minor offense in Japan, Kurosawa focused his film on the complex psychogram of its protagonists. The question, 'Is a rich man's child worth as much as a poor man's child?' Dominates the first part of the film. The second part, determined by action, asks about the motive of the perpetrator and his personal motives. Kurosawa contrasts the kidnapper's dwelling in the 'hell' of the city of Yokohama with the dreamlike villa of the manufacturer, which, on the other hand, looks like 'heaven'. The conflict in post-war Japanese society between tradition and modernity, wealth and poverty, is masterfully reflected in Kurosawa's film [ sic ]. 'Between Heaven and Hell' is an extremely complex, humanistic parable, working with different stylistic devices, about responsibility, morality and corruptibility in a world that has gotten out of joint. "

- Prisma online film database

"An extremely complex, virtuoso humanistic parable about responsibility, morality and corruptibility in a disrupted modern world, which demands a new determination of the position beyond all too easy criteria of order and evaluation."

“Kurosawa's cunning adaptation transfers [...] the topography of the original [...] to Yokohama [...]. [He] makes brilliant use of the space [of the Cinemascope format], even in the chamber play-like interior shots, the Cinemascope format is indispensable; the old master also gives us a captivating lesson in image design with his adaptation. "

literature

  • Ed McBain (di Evan Hunter): King's ransom. Crime with the 87th police station (original title: King's Ransom ). German by Gitta Bauer . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Vienna 1980, 172 pages, ISBN 3-548-10062-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Between heaven and hell at prisma-online.de; Retrieved November 1, 2008
  2. ^ "Lexicon of International Films" (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997
  3. ^ HG Pflaum: Manhattan in Yokohama. Akira Kurosawa's film "Between Heaven and Hell" , Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 9, 1994, p. 14.