The Lower Depths

One of Akira Kurosawa’s darkest, most uncompromising films, this by turns bleak and blackly comic adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s social-realist play transplants the story to nineteenth-century Japan, where the residents of a squalid boardinghouse navigate love, tragedy, and the conflict between their illusions and harsh reality. Making maximal use of the theatrical, claustrophobic setting and a powerhouse ensemble cast headed by Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada, Kurosawa channels Japan’s postwar disillusionment into a howl of existential angst.