It is possible to see High and Low as proof of Rohmer's these that cinema is an art of space on all levels. Kurosawa arranges the figures in his scenes with the masterly precision of classic cinema, he studies the spaces of the large city with its strict separation of top (rich) and bot-tom (poor) and configures the three formally disparate parts of his story into a fascinating whole. The first one tells the story of a rich shoe manufacturer, who decides to gamble every-thing he has when the son of his chauffeur is kidnapped, the second one deals with the police's hunt for the kidnappers, and the third story looks at the physical features of the booming city of Tokyo from the perspective of the (absent) criminal. A sadly often overlooked masterpiece from perhaps the best-known Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. _Selected and with an introduction by Christoph_ _Hochhäusler._