The Inheritance (1962)

 Masaki Kobayashi's "The Inheritance"


After his megalithic film series, "The Human Condition," Masaki Kobayashi returned to a smaller, more restrained story with 1962's "The Inheritance." Obviously framed in noir stylings and jazz scores, the film's plot concerns a dying businessman orchestrating his will. The surrounding cast of characters plot and scheme to acquire his inheritance.

There was a certain moody charm to this film. Everything is so slick and the characters are so morally duplicitous, hence the noir aesthetic. Kobayashi does an impeccable job of situating these money-chasing characters into the cold, industrial modern world. Their environment is an extension of them and them an extension of their environment. "The Inheritance" certainly displays Kobayashi's bleak outlook on modern greed and corruption.



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