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Poster for The Lower Depths

The Lower Depths

1957 · 125 min

A slow, stagey immersion into a cramped, grimy world where hope flickers and fades among desperate lives.

Directed by
Akira Kurosawa
Genres
Drama
Starring
Toshirō Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyōko Kagawa
Overview
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.

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Rent or buy in the UK
  • Apple TV Store
  • Amazon Video
More options Data from JustWatch
Directed by
Akira Kurosawa
Genres
Drama
Starring
Toshirō Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyōko Kagawa
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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • bleakstrength 2 of 3
  • melancholicstrength 2 of 3
  • satiricalstrength 1 of 3
  • earneststrength 1 of 3
Pacing
slow-burn, 1 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
demanding, 4 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • class
  • isolation
  • betrayal
  • survival
  • morality
Places
  • single country house
Era
period
Audience
adult
Form
  • ensemble
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language mild
  • Violence mild
  • Sex mild
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action2
Horror1
Humour3
Realism7
Romance3
Tension5
Darkness7
Complexity7
Emotional weight7

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Where to watch in the UK

Rent or buy
  • Apple TV Store
  • Amazon Video

Streaming data from JustWatch.All options on TMDB

Details

Genres
drama
Directed by
Akira Kurosawa
Written by
Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni
Starring
Toshirō Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyōko Kagawa, Ganjirō Nakamura II, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Akemi Negishi, Nijiko Kiyokawa
Music
Masaru Satō
Cinematography
Kazuo Yamasaki
Runtime
125 min
Country
Japan
Languages
Japanese

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