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The Lower Depths - Criterion Collection |
List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $31.96 |
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Reviews |
Features:
Description:
In faithfully adapting Maxim Gorky's classic play The Lower Depths, Akira Kurosawa incorporated themes from several of his better-known films. Transplanted from the play's Russian setting to Japan's Edo (pre-Tokyo) period, the film cleverly places its poverty-stricken characters into a vividly Japanese context while retaining their tenacious defense against life's relentless miseries. As the title implies, the comedic drama unfolds literally in a hole--a dreary tenement sunken into a refuse-strewn landscape--where Kurosawa's superb cast breathes life into the hopes, dreams, and delusions of their characters. Landlady, thief, prostitute, tinker, actor... all but the cynical gambler live in desperate self-deception, and Kurosawa finds poignant humor in the ways they hold reality at bay. Toshiro Mifune excels as the thief, but this is perhaps Kurosawa's greatest ensemble achievement; lengthy rehearsals and multiple cameras resulted in a fluid, masterful film full of fine performances, confined to only two intimate settings yet embracing universal foibles of humanity. --Jeff Shannon
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