LOWER DEPTHS, THE [どん底, DONZOKO] (1957) Japanese program

The Lower Depths. 1957. Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyogo Kagawa, dir: Akira Kurosawa; Toho. Vintage original 10 x 7″ (22.5 x 18 cm) Japanese program, pictorial wrappers, 10 pp. Slight creasing, just about fine.

Akira Kurosawa took Maxim Gorky’s play (which two decades earlier had been the basis of a Jean Renoir film) and transposed it to the Edo period in Japan. The Lower Depths is the story of a dilapidated tenement where its elderly owner rents out rooms to gamblers, prostitutes, petty thieves and broken-down alcoholics.