Without this knowledge, Kurosawa commands our attention on the events at hand. The final stretch involves the confrontation, and concludes with a brilliant final on-screen resolution. Motives are revealed, and they are much different from the ones we were led to suspect. By engrossing his audience in the story, Kurosawa is free to fill his picture with his distinct visual trademarks without distraction. He is an absolute master when it comes to incorporating ingenious camerawork in a way that is practically devoid of self-awareness.
Most directors deliberately call attention to the way their camera movies.
With Kurosawa, the work is subtle but brilliant. His use of deep-focus photography is unequalled in cinema, creating scenes of remarkable depth and using spatial relationships between objects and actors to quietly lead the eye further and further into the scene. Movement is often used to bisect the composition and add a sense of fluidity. Most notable, perhaps, is the movement of the camera on a vertical axis, which not only lends emphasis to the high and low mentioned in the title, but constantly changes the dynamics and framing of scenes. It's a performance that keeps you thinking about the character, even during the long investigative periods when he's not on screen.