Kurosawa followed is adaptation of Macbeth, THRONE OF BLOOD (1957), in which he deployed the basic premise and some of the structure but none of the dialogue, with yet another adaptation of a classic author, this time Maxim Gorky’s THE LOWER DEPTHS (1967), which he follows quite closely. The former ingeniously deploys the theatrical within the cinematic, the latter balances at the other extreme. The film is basically shot in one set, sometimes in very long takes, the dialogue is a fundamental vehicle of meaning, and yet each framing and reframing is precise and expressive.
Beginning:
I loved THRONE OF BLOOD; THE LOWER DEPTHS is a film I admire and can’t fault but also don’t like. It’s quite a grim premise, which begins with a marvellous shot of workers emptying their garbage bins down the side of the cliff which lands on the rooftops of the down and out dwellers of the lower depths as they’re eating. We’re introduced to a landlord (Nakamura Gangiro II), his wife (Isuzu Yamada), his wife’s sister (Kyoko Kagawa), a thief (Toshiro Mifune), a prostitute, a gambler, an actor on his uppers, a tinker and his dying wife, an ex-samurai. We’re shown how relations of power are merely reproduced no matter at what level. The landlady’s sister is treated like a slave by her own kin. The thief has been having an affair with the landlady but has fallen in love with the sister. The cooper only appreciates his wife after she’s dead. A pilgrim arrives in the middle of all of this to offer wisdom and support. All bear up with their current situation with illusions of who they once were and hopes for change. Near the end the landlord gets killed, the thief and the landlady end up in jail, people leave, there’s a new landlord and new tenants but nothing changes. The film ends on a musical number and a killer last line, which refutes some of the accusations of sentimentality made against the film. The film is also quite funny. The whole ensemble is superb – accounts tell of a rehearsal period between 40-60 days before the film’s shoot — Mifune and Yamada winning prizes.
Mifune’s Entrance:
Maxim Gorky’s play was written in 1902, very much of its time, from the beginnings of that revolutionary period in Russia. Stanislavski directed the original Moscow Arts Theatre Production, a big hit, and the film found its way across the world, becoming part of Japan’s theatre repertory from the twenties. By the time Kurosawa made this version there had already been a Japanese adaption from 1921, SOULS ON THE ROAD, (Minoru Murata), a 1946 adaptation in India, NEEDHA NAGAR (Chetan Anand) a 1947 version in China, NIGHT INN (Huang Zuolin); and perhaps most famously, Renoir’s 1936 adaption LES BAS FONDS with Jean Gabin and Louis Jouvet.
One of the film’s major themes is that of harsh truths of existence vs the comforting illusions that allow people to live that existence. The issue of truth is an ongoing one in Kurosawa’s work. I suppose the reason I didn’t like the film is firstly, that I’m more with Blanche Dubois regarding illusions, even if it might lead to the madhouse. And it also brings to mind the Butler’s comments to Sullivan in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS: ‘You see, sir, rich people and theorists – who are usually rich people – think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches – as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn’t, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned.’ I don’t agree that the subject itself should be shunned but certainly a bourgeois gaze on it, which I take Kurosawa’s version to be, is an uncomfortable one.
Ending of Film:
José Arroyo
