★★★★ This play by Máximo Gorki about power relations -which lead to tragedy- in a slum has had several film adaptations. That of Jean Renoir with Louis Jouvet is famous, but there it is noticeable that the director has an optimism that is contradictory to the plot. The same is not true of Kurosawa, who sees this drama that includes forbidden love and submission as a dark landscape. And it is that the portrait of poverty works as an amplified metaphor not only of material misery, but moral, and sometimes such a theme can only be appreciated from the satirical point of view. That is to say: Kurosawa not only adapts the base material to his Japanese world, but also reads the work and communicates the ideas that he can extract from it in a very personal way. Although it is not one of his most famous films (Seven Samurais, Rashomon, Kagemusha) it is one of the best.
