Shot at the Toho Studios in Tokyo in-between Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Lower Depths has Kurosawa moving the action from Russia to mid-19th century Japan but remaining very faithful to Gorky's original work. "Gorky's period was Imperial Russia but I changed it to Japan, the Edo period. In Edo [Tokyo] during this period, the Shogunate was falling to pieces and thousands were living almost unendurable lives. Their resentment we can still feel in the senryu and rakushu [poetry of sarcasm and other forms of entertainment] of the time. Anyway, I wanted to show this atmosphere, to reveal it though whether I really did or not, I don't know."
Kurosawa decided to take a comedic approach in making the film, "I'd always wanted to make Gorky's play into a movie. Into a really easy and entertaining movie. After all, The Lower Depths isn't at all gloomy. It is very funny and I remember laughing over it. That is because we are shown people who really want to live and we are shown them I think- humorously. People are just supposed to relax and enjoy this picture as they would any programmer."
The cast rehearsed in full makeup for forty-five days, even having the cameras running without film. "We worked steadily and well, and the shooting did not take long. We had many rehearsals and worked out all the choreography (actors, camera, etc.,) well in advance. Maybe that was why it was so easy to make." Kurosawa later remembered. "I used bakabayashi [musicians traditionally used in traveling shows] because we always think of this music as being joyous and festive, and I wanted it to suggest precisely the opposite, something dark and tragic. Also, once, to get everyone in the proper mood, I invited onto the set one of the few remaining old men who could still do Endo rakugo [satirical stories] and we never had more fun than on that day." I wanted Mifune to play his part in the style of Mezumi-kozo [a Robin Hood-type character] but that didn't work. Mifune is simply too well-built, he has too much presence. He can't help but bring his own dignity to his roles."
The Lower Depths was released as a road-show on September 17, 1957 before going into wider distribution in that country on October 1st. It was not released in the United States until February 9, 1962 in a subtitled version. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther was moved to write, "The Bleecker Street Cinema deserves a medal for making its screen available to Akira Kurosawa's Japanese version of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, a five-year-old film of the famed director's that has not heretofore been booked in New York. For there is in this oriental visioning of the Russian drama of poverty and despair a great deal of quality and technique that the cinema lover and student might profitably see. Here Kurosawa, the brilliant master of passion and atmosphere (as witness his Rashomon, Ikiru and more recent Thunder in the Blood [Throne of Blood]), has restrained the gestures of his actors to a conspicuous degree, while concentrating upon their facial expressions and their slow, painful posturing of dismal moods." Crowther bemoaned the fact, which is still true today, that foreign-language films do not get a wider audience in the United States, "[W]e suspect that the attraction will be mainly, if not solely, for those who have an interest in the work of the director. A medal is probably all the Bleecker Street Cinema can expect to get out of making the film available."
Author Donald Richie observed that the ending of the film, in which the audience is told that it was all an illusion was a jolt to the audience. "The final song and dance have been intensely moving as only the sight of an unknowing innocence can be moving in a world shown as hopeless. Then, like cold water dashed in the face, we are told to come out of it, to come off it, the show's over. The ending is very shocking. It certainly shocked the Japanese, the majority of whom disliked the film; the critics were particularly strong on what they innocently called Kurosawa's 'negative' attitude. His attitude is, of course, nothing of the sort. Unlike his audience, Kurosawa prefers to take life straight, to see illusion as illusion. No more positive attitude can be imagined, nor any attitude more difficult. It is, indeed, so difficult that it becomes funny. He was right; The Lower Depths is a very funny play, and the film is a very funny film. If life is not something to cry over then it must become something to laugh about."
The Lower Depths was released on DVD in 2004 in the United States by The Criterion Collection as a two-DVD set along with Jean Renoir's film version of Gorky's play, Les bas-fonds.
Producer: Akira Kurosawa
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni; Maxim Gorky (play "The Lower Depths")
Cinematography: Kazuo Yamasaki
Music: Masaru Sato
Film Editing: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshiro Mifune (Sutekichi the Thief), Isuzu Yamada (Osugi the Landlady), Kyoko Kagawa (Okayo, Osugi's Sister), Ganjiro Nakamura (Rokubei, Osugi's Husband), Minoru Chiaki (Former Samurai), Kamatari Fujiwara (The Actor), Akemi Negishi (Osen the Prostitute), Nijiko Kiyokawa (Otaki the Candy-Seller), Koji Mitsui (Yoshisaburo the Gambler), Eijiro Tono (Tomekichi the Tinker), Haruo Tanaka (Tatsu), Eiko Miyoshi (Asa, Tomekichi's Wife), Bokuzen Hidari (Kahei the Pilgrim), Atsushi Watanabe (Kuna).
BW-125m.
by Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Crowther, Bosley "Screen: Kurosawa's 'Lower Depths': Japanese Version of Gorky Play Opens 5-Year-Old Movie at the Bleecker Street" The New York Times 11 Feb 62
Richie, Donald The Films of Akira Kurosawa
http://www.imdb.com
