When a Woman Ascends the Stairs: Criterion Collection (1963)

Naruse, the 4th and often forgotten great Japanese director...

I love cinema, but I don't know nearly as much about it as I would like to. All the same, I like to learn, and I often listen to the advice of those that know more. That is how I ended up watching "When a woman ascends the stairs" (1959), by Mikio Naruse.

According to Ruben, a coworker who also happens to know a lot about cinema, Naruse (1905-1969) is, after Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ozu, "the 4th and often forgotten great Japanese director". Truth to be told, I hadn't even heard Naruse's name before Ruben told me that, but when he offered to lend me this dvd, I didn't hesitate. After all, I didn't have too much to lose, at most two hours of my time.

I am quite happy I seized the opportunity to watch this film. It is poignant, and far from fast-paced, but manages to tell a story in such a way that makes you care, and think. The main character is Keiko (Hideko Takamine), a virtuous widow that works as a hostess in Tokyo, supervising a bar and attracting customers thanks to her beauty and grace. Even though Keiko is still young, she realises that times goes by and she is getting old, something that brings her face to face with choices regarding her future. Should she marry, buy a bar of her own, or leave things the way they are? And does she really have any choice?

All in all, I think this is a movie well-worth seeing, that will please those that enjoy the kind of film that leads you to identify with the characters, even if you don't really have a lot in common with them. Naruse pays attention to details, and weaves an atmosphere that ends up making the illusion of cinema almost real. For all that, I find it easy to recommend "When a woman ascends the stairs"... Thanks, Ruben :)

Belen Alcat
February 7, 2008

Stairs of Shame

1960 marks a changing point in the world of Japanese film. The previous year Oshima Nagisa made his filmic debut with his stark Street of Love and Hope which eventually led to a number of young directors, including the likes of Shinoda Masahiro and Imamura Shohei, breaking the ranks of assistant directors to eventually form a group, although Oshima dislikes the label, of New Wave directors. These films tended to be quite edgy and their levels of sexuality and violence surpassed earlier films. However, of course, the majority of Japanese film directors were not part of the New Wave and older luminaries such as Kurosawa, Kobayashi and Ozu continued to make films, albeit at a slower pace than before and, as in the case of Kurosawa, would come more to depend on foreign producers to make their films. While the films of Ozu have garnered great praise in the West since the release of Tokyo Story in 1953 and Kurosawa's with Rashomon in 1950, the filmic work of Naruse Mikio has received less attention. However, he stands firm as one of Japan's most important directors.

Directing some eighty-nine films during his long career which stretched over four decades, many of Naruse's films shared themes with the great director Mizoguchi Kenji: women and poverty. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs focuses on Keiko, a beautiful but aging, she's in her thirties, widow turned bar hostess who acts as the main draw within the bars she works because of her classic beauty and her poised, refines manner. A widow for five years, Keiko, unlike many of the other bar hostesses, keeps her patrons at a distance and has taken one as her lover. However, because of money issues and a mother and older brother who depend on her, Keiko feels more at the mercy of the men who surround her. Wanting to break away from the life of a hostess and open her own bar, Keiko thinks of ways she can get the one million yen so she can be independent. However, is her desire anything more than a pipe dream?

During the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Japan's economy was quickly on the upswing. However, many individuals such as the large Korean minority and the destitute were left behind and the gap between the haves and the have-nots continued to grow. With is careful eye and attention to detail, Naruse carefully puts on film the struggles of these individuals and the degradations they have to suffer in the cutthroat world of metal and concrete in which they life. A fine film, hopefully more of Naruse's films will be released to Western audiences in the near future. November 4, 2007

Very good if unadventurous

This is my first viewing of a film by Mikio Naruse and I was very favorably impressed. He is/was extremely economical in his approach to film making and this is both a strength and perhaps also something of a weakness. Additionally, I hope all his films are not as humorless as this one is.

As I watched this filmed I was reminded of Fellini's classic, Nights of Cabiria. Keiko and Cabiria are very similarly circumstanced, as another reviewer has noted. The scene about two-thirds of the way through the film when Keiko is pictured briefly standing before a bar named Cabiria in Tokyo's Ginza district appears to be Naruse's way of paying homage to Fellini. But this film and Nights of Cabiria are not in the same league. Where Fellini was more willing (and able) to show rather than tell, Naruse's treatment of this material, spare though it is, is also almost wholly lacking in nuance.


October 26, 2007

incredible movie

I really enjoyed this masterpiece!
What a nuanced director. I have only seen one other movie of Naruse's and it was the long 24 Eyes.
I loved all the performances in this movie. Very touching.
The facial expressions during the acting scenes were so subtle but very well done.
If you are a fan of thoughtful Japanese film from the 1940's and 1950's, you will love this transition to modern Japan culture. I had really no idea how the hostess bars worked but this was the perfect film to exposition such a terribly binding situation for post-war women!

A true Japanese cinema classic by an underappreciated master director! September 6, 2007

Magnificent

One of the last and best of Naruse's films, "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" showcases the subtle, forceful emotional expression that Naruse was so capable of invoking from his actors. This was written and produced by the great Ryuzo Kikushima, who expertly crafted a story perfectly suited to Naruse's ethos just as he had done many times for Kurosawa. The theme of downtrodden and constrained women in Japan's modern de facto patriarchal society has been exhaustively explored in Japanese film, but this is a cut above the usual exploitive melodramas concerning abused women.

As lovely as ever, Takamine plays a bar hostess in postwar Ginza at the onset of middle age and a crossroads in her life. She hates her job for perfectly good reasons and is forced to provide for others and sustain herself well beyond her means. A seemingly endless string of disappointments and obligations threaten to break our heroine, but her inner determination is as resolute as her life is tragic.

Takamine performs the lead with remarkable grace and charm; even by her standards, this performance was exceptional. On the verge of stardom, a young Tatsuya Nakadai also delivers a morose, ultimately explosive portrayal of an unrequited lover. As with just about everything he's done, the emotional outburst of his final scene is striking.

The ending of the film seems more hopeful and satisfying in retrospect than it did during a first viewing; in leaving matters unresolved, the protagonist's determination is emphasized in a very poignant manner.

Like most Criterion releases, this disc features attractive, tastefully designed packaging and menus, and some fine bonus materials: a commentary track by Donald Richie, a rather tacky theatrical trailer and an excellent 2005 interview with Tatsuya Nakadai in which he discusses his career, his work with Mikio Naruse and experiences involving this film in particular. August 28, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...