When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) User Reviews

Emotionally Brutal Look at a Bar Hostess' Desultory Life from Another Japanese Film Master

[EUyeshima · 8/10 · 24 July 2007]

Just as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu seemed destined to be recognized as the troika of classic Japanese cinematic masters, here comes the work of a filmmaker who has been under the radar to Westerners all these years, Mikio Naruse. The Criterion Collection is giving Naruse his due with the release of his provocatively titled 1960 melodrama, a fine piece of work that strikes me as a cross between Ozu's elliptical narrative style and deliberate pacing and Douglas Sirk's sense of Baroque-level dramatic sensibilities.

Sharply written by Ryuzo Kikushima, the net result is a clear-eyed yet humanistic glimpse into the after-hours bar scene in post-WWII Tokyo's Ginza district with the primary focus on Keiko, a hostess to whom colleagues refer affectionately as "Mama". Her existence is a daily struggle as she depends on her companion-seeking businessman clients to finance the bar in which she works, and concurrently, confronts the fear of aging in a highly competitive field, all the while standing on her high moral ground to avoid the unsavory pitfalls of others in her profession. Although she is barely in her thirties, she feels pressured to make an imminent choice between opening her own bar and getting married for security. Even more than Ozu, arguably the most sensitive of Japan's film-making elite, Naruse shows with uncompromising clarity how women are consigned to their subservient roles in a male-dominated society.

As she keeps up appearances as part of not only her job but also as her emotional suit of armor, Keiko faces the temptations of four men in particular, all far from ideal, but each promises some aspect of hope for her to get out of her desultory existence. Meanwhile, she faces the machinations of younger hostesses out to get their share of the money and fulfill their dreams of security. Naruse takes his time in setting up the various character situations in the first half, which makes the film feel a little more plodding than it should be, but the pace and dramatic tension pick up in the second half when Keiko's desperation becomes more palpable. It's fortunate that Naruse cast his longtime leading lady Hideko Takamine in the highly complex role of Keiko, as her multi-layered performance is a model of emotional precision. A beautiful actress with a look of often haunting passivity, she subtly provides the emotional tether among all the vividly rendered characters in her orbit.

The four men are skillfully portrayed by actors familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of classic Japanese cinema - Ganjiro Nakamura ("Floating Weeds") as the aged executive in need of a mistress; Daisuke Katô ("Yojimbo") as the cherubic bachelor who is not what he appears; Tatsuya Nakadai ("Harakiri", "Ran") as the younger bartender/manager who worships Keiko from a distance; and Masayuki Mori ("Rashomon", "Ugetsu") as the married lover unable to leave his family. As intriguing counterpoints to Keiko, Reiko Dan plays the flirtatious Junko with Western-style abandon, and Keiko Awaji makes the ambitious Yuri a tragic, pitiable figure. The film is complemented by a cool, jazz-piano score by Toshirô Mayuzumi, absolutely the right touch for the slightly tawdry urban setting. As with several Criterion releases of classic Japanese cinema (like Ozu's "Tokyo Story" and Nakahira's "Crazed Fruit"), film scholar Donald Richie provides rich commentary on an alternate track in the 2007 DVD. There is also an illuminating 2005 interview with Nakadai on Naruse and the film-making process, as well as the original theatrical trailer. Four insightful essays, including a glowing tribute to Naruse by Takamine, are included in a 38-page booklet accompanying the DVD package.

The Will of a Woman

[jacqui-3 · 9/10 · 23 October 1999]

This is my first Naruse film and, boy, what a treat it is! Hideko Takamine is simply brilliant in her evocation of a madame in the ginza bar district, where businessmen go in the after-hours for drinks, flattery, and anything else they can get their hands on.

Takamine's Keiko is a woman bound by social constraints: an aging mother who needs allowance from her daughter to get by, a brother who must be saved from prison because he forged legal documents, a nephew who needs money for operation, rich businessmen and corporate owners who want her body in exchange for petty patronage...

Despite all these attempts to stifle her, to drain her body, labor, and emotions for all their worth and resource, Keiko emerges from life's disappointements and heartbreaks the strong individual she tries to be. Her refusal to be defeated by family, men, the institution of the ginza bar and survival itself is reflected in many elements. The playful music, for example, discourages us from reducing the film to yet another tearjerking festival. Keiko herself is an intelligent and sophisticated commentator on her life as a particular kind of "fallen woman". Throughout the film, there are moments of narration and commentary on the ginza bar-mystique. Here we witness a resilence and self-respect so tremendous that the notion of "feminism" of Mizoguchi's women have to be reconsidered.

"Coming back was as bleak as a cold day in Winter. But certain trees bloom...no matter how cold the wind." WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS is a great testament to Takamine's acting wizardry and Naruse's sensitive treatment of the social construction of women - a particular way of brutalizing the individual.

Naruse's masterpiece

[Red-125 · 9/10 · 8 July 2006]

Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki (1960), directed by Mikio Naruse, was shown in the United States under the title "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs." The film stars Hideko Takamine, Naruse's muse, as Keiko, the Mama-San of a Tokyo bar.

Although the IMDb plot summary says that Keiko is a geisha, that isn't accurate. Geishas do appear briefly in the movie, but Keiko is actually a bar hostess. As portrayed in the movie, bar hostesses are neither geishas nor prostitutes. Geishas still wear the traditional costume, whereas the bar hostesses are dressed in western fashion. The role of the bar hostess is to flatter the male customers and provide company, but not sex. In fact, Keiko has been celibate since the death of her husband.

These women have a fairly good income, but they usually don't have much cash, because they are expected to live and dress fashionably, and most of their money goes for rent or clothes.

The title "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" refers to Keiko's thoughts as she climbs the stairs that lead to the bar at which she works. Although Keiko doesn't hate her work, she doesn't enjoy it either. It's a job, and her options as a woman are limited in the Japanese male-dominated society. (Even though Keiko, as Mama-San, has some authority over the other women, the real power resides in the male owner of the bar and his manager.)

The plot of the film resolves around the choices the protagonist must make as she attempts to achieve some measure of happiness and financial stability. As would be expected, these goals are difficult to accomplish for a woman in her situation.

Director Naruse returns in this film to his favorite theme--working-class women who must choose among options that aren't very palatable. What makes this film his masterpiece--in my opinion--are the courage and depth of character that Keiko demonstrates.

A Masterpiece from Naruse

[davidals · 10/10 · 8 July 2003]

Finding Naruse Mikio films has been very, very tough, and after seeing this I'd say it's a tragedy. This is among the most gorgeous dramas I've seen - a brooding and dark melodrama, shot in velvety black and white, with stunning widescreen photography.

Based upon my viewing of this and one other Naruse film (to date), I'd say that Naruse's worldview is considerably more cynical than Ozu or Mizoguchi (both of whom he seems to often draw unfavorable comparisons with, from the relatively few critics to have dug into his work) - the strength of women will be taken for granted, or abused by a hostile world regardless of shrewdness, intellect or beauty, and there is a shy jaded quality to this film that gives it an engaging intensity, that while not nearly as subtle, objective or cerebral as Ozu, IS definitely more passionate. Here, and also in the earlier LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, Naruse's women are idealized, heroic - symbolic in a larger sense of outsiders or rebels (of any variety) in a social milieu that values discretion and certain forms of conformity above all else.

If you can find this film, I highly recommend it - more of Naruse's work should be made available outside of Japan.

An exquisite character study

[howard.schumann · 10/10 · 6 March 2006]

Widowed Tokyo bar hostess Keiko is in her thirties and thinking about her limited choices. She could open her own bar but this would require financial help from clients and perhaps favors she is unwilling to give, or she could get married, but that would mean breaking a vow to her late husband that she would never love another man. Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is an exquisite character study about a woman caught in a trap of financial obligations who is forced to perform a job she dislikes in order to stay afloat. It is both a depiction of one woman's courage and perseverance and a commentary on the limited opportunities for women in Japan with little education or family connections. Hideko Takamine is unforgettable as Keiko, the beleaguered hostess who is affectionately called "mama" by the younger barmaids.

Keiko is a graceful and charming woman who wears a traditional kimono but is under pressure by her devoted manager Kenichi Komatsu (Tatsuya Nakadai) to modernize her wardrobe and upgrade her living arrangements to keep up with growing Western influences. Of the many men in her life, three monopolize her attention: Mr. Fujisaki (Masayuki Mori), Mr. Sekine (Daisuke Kato), and Mr. Minobe (Ganjiro Nakamura). Each relationship starts out with promise but each leads to severe disappointment. She receives a marriage proposal from Mr. Sekine that turns out to be bogus. She tells Mr. Fujisaki that she loves him but promised her husband she would not remarry. Nonetheless, she is crushed when she learns that he has been transferred to Osaka.

The film complements the dramatic action with Keiko's inner dialogue. Backed by a cool jazz score that evokes the mood of Tokyo streets in the early evening, she contemplates how most women in Tokyo are going to their home when her work is first starting. In another sequence she muses, "Around midnight Tokyo's 16,000 bar women go home. The best go home by car. Second-rate ones by streetcar. The worst go home with their customers." As Keiko struggles financially to help her aging mother, her brother who must pay a lawyer to stay out of prison, and her nephew who needs an operation, she knows that she would be better off if she would relax her standards, but she will not compromise her integrity. The stairs she must climb each night to her bar become a symbol both of her triumphant determination and her personal tragedy.

A masterpiece

[liehtzu · 10/10 · 17 July 1999]

Beautiful film about a ginza bar girl approaching the age of thirty - an age at which, she claims, a girl of her profession can either "get married or open a bar of her own." It is a film about how her quest for one and then the other ends in disappointment. Most significantly, though, it is a vehicle through which filmmaker Naruse expresses his view that life is a vicious cycle of disappointments at every turn, a fate which no human action to fight it can deter. The film is breathtakingly shot in widescreen black and white, adding to the film's already bittersweet poignancy. It's a wonderful piece of cinema - a quietly rewarding and remarkably unforced masterpiece. "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" is, quite simply, a thing of beauty and brilliance, and it is a great work of art.

A story of a brave woman...

[AkuSokuZan · 10/10 · 20 August 2001]

Keiko, also known as mama, is one of those truly unforgettable characters who you swear must exist somewhere out there in the real world. She is both strong, graceful and intelligent. This film has an outstanding lead and supporting cast, and ofcourse a great story centering on the day by day account of the life of a bar woman who struggles to maintain her pride. Don't worry, this movie's initially slow pace blossoms with enough twists and surprises to captivate and reward modern viewers.

Other characters to compare Keiko to is Junko, a much younger bar girl, who manages to work the system to her financial advantage. Komatsu, Keiko's manager, a young man smitten by Keiko's enchanting beauty and is reduced to just imagining a future alongside his beloved. Both Junko and Komatsu's youth prove to be of great contrast to Keiko and her wisdom of thiry years. Unlike Keiko, Junko can imagine and realize her simple but dead end dream of opening a bar in exchange for her dignity. Komatsu's wishes are as empty as his hands as he plays bartender in a run down club. He, alongside other people who are part of Keiko's life will slowly switch roles from friends, patrons and protector, Komatsu, into those who will contribute to the torture in Keiko's life. Just as rice was the center of Seven Samurai, money is the heart of this film. Ultimately, the heroine can rise above everything, everyone and ascend the stairs to Bar Carton again.

A neo-realist feminist drama worth watching

[mikeburdick · 7/10 · 23 September 2014]

This film reminded me most of Italian neo-realist films like "Umberto D" and particularly, "Nights of Cabiria," because it focuses on the struggles of average people who are perhaps on the fringes, the subject being a bar hostess. While Keiko's not exactly a prostitute, she is paid to entertain men, a lucrative but soulless career.

As she comes to grips with aging, Keiko struggles to decide between striking out on her own or giving up the business completely. While Fate naturally deals her some ups and downs, I found it to be ultimately quite a cynical story, lacking the hope of "Cabiria." Perhaps that makes it truer to life.

Regardless, there are some outstanding performances by Hideko Takamine and Tatsuya Nakadai. This is the first Naruse film I've seen, and look forward to watching more of his films. Unfortunately, they are quite difficult to get your hands on.

Very, very sad....

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 6 December 2012]

While "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" may lack the excitement of many Japanese films, I really enjoyed it and felt it rather profound...as well as profoundly sad. It's the story of a woman, Mama, who has worked as a hostess in a Ginza bar for some time and she longs to leave the life. After all, her job is to be nice to men who come to the bar and get them to drink as well as get them to buy her drinks. It isn't much of a life and the long hours and drinking take their toll. However, despite hating the life, she also tries to uphold her standards and, unlike some hostesses, she doesn't sleep with her clients. But there are many pressures to do so--especially since the job really doesn't pay well. Plus, sleeping with one of these men might enable her to have enough money to buy a place of her own and have a bit of security. But, for every step forward she takes, there is yet another setback. Can she somehow forge a better life for herself before it is too late? While a film about quiet desperation is probably NOT everyone's cup of tea, the film was written, acted and directed exceptionally well. It de-glamorizes these women and helps create a sense of empathy for them--particularly Mama, who the audience can't help but like. Well done.

Surely it is time Naruse was discovered in the West

[MOscarbradley · 9/10 · 13 November 2013]

The stairs in question are those of a bar in the red-light district of Tokyo and the woman who ascends them is Mama-San, the bar's chief hostess, but the stairs may just as well be those of a brothel for the girls who work these bars are basically prostitutes, (even in Japan in 1960 you could never be that explicit). Of all Japanese directors Mikio Naruse was the one most concerned with the plight of women in contemporary society and he brought to his tales of women fallen on hard times an almost Sirkian sensibility though even Sirk's melodramas stayed clear of the brothel. This may also be the most 'westernized' of all Naruse's films. We could be in the New Orleans of "Walk on the wild side" and even the credits of this film have a touch of the Saul Bass about them. (If only Dmytryk's film could have been this good). There is a naturalism to Naruse's film that American melodramas lack and it's this naturalism that lifts it out of being mere melodrama and into the realms of tragedy. Fundamentally, Mama-San is a woman who hates the life she has chosen but feels powerless to move on and Hideko Takamine, (from "Floating Clouds"), is superb in the role. Yet here is an actress and a director whose work never really traveled beyond Japan and even today Naruse trails in popular opinion well behind the likes of Ozu and Mizoguchi. Hopefully the release of this film in a DVD box set together with "Floating Clouds" and "Late Chrysanthemums" will rectify

Long study of Ginza life

[bob998 · 7/10 · 23 May 2021]

My rating is sort of a compromise between a 10 for the superb acting from the whole cast, especially the three principals Takamine, Nakadai and Mori, and 2 for the subject matter, which I never found involved me greatly. The film just plods along, one little misfortune after another for the heroine, who must display immense quantities of patience and forbearance. The viewer gets tired of seeing a plucky woman getting out of one scrape or embarrassment after another.

I see Naruse as a minor figure in the Japanese cinema, well below Ozu and Mizoguchi, two great artists who knew how to depict human suffering and give it meaning for all of us.

Dated study of sexism in 1950s Japanese society

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 12 March 2015]

Having watched and enjoyed Mikio Naruse's LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, I was hoping WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS would be of a similar quality. Looks-wise it is, but unfortunately the story in in this one is lacking, failing to present any truly sympathetic characters and instead making the film often dull and a chore to sit through.

The problem here lies with the protagonist, who just doesn't seem to be a very interesting character. Yes, her struggles in a male-dominated society have the potential to be interesting, but the film seems to constantly skip drama in favour of presenting humdrum, everyday-life style scenes. Certainly there was nothing here to grip or interest the viewer as in Naruse's earlier film.

Mots D'Escaliers

[boblipton · 9/10 · 26 May 2019]

Hideko Takamine is a hostess at a Ginza bar. It's her job to greet the customers, keep them drinking, flirt with them, and later, collect the tab. She has enormous expenses because she must dress and live with an air of sophistication. Many of the girls supplement their earnings by sleeping with the customers. Best of all is to have a wealthy 'patron'.

Everyone likes and respects Miss Takamine. They call her 'mama' and make no overt attempt to seduce her, though it is clear all the men want to. She will have none of it. She was married briefly to a man who died. The rumor is that she put a love letter in his funeral urn, writing she would never love another.

Miss Takamine is unhappy. Her expenses are enormous. She feels her youth fading. She sends much of her earnings to her mother, who complains about her work. Her deadbeat brother faces prison and has a polio-crippled son. She would like to open her own bar, but feels nothing about her clients. Opportunities and sorrows, glimpses of happiness and illness open and close upon her.

It's another fine examples of Mikio Naruse's movies about being a single woman in a society devised for men's happiness. If the visuals are those of many a movie of its moment, it is a revolutionary, feminist movie in traditional garb, powered by the finest performance I have seen Miss Takamine give. She struggles but cannot change her situation. In this stasis, she changes.

I find one flaw in this otherwise impeccable Naruse masterpiece: a certain lack of rhythm. Perhaps what seems to me to be slightly clumsy editing by Eiji Ooi, Naruse's editor for his final two dozen movies, may be intended to show the disruption in Miss Takamine's life, her inner turmoil.

Mother Courage

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 5 February 2021]

The main character, frequently referred to as Mama, has a really hard road to hoe. She is the underlying support for her friends and relatives. She is a widow who, in most circumstances, should be left alone. But she is constantly being hit on financially and emotionally. She works in the Ginza, which is a collection of bars in post war Tokyo. She has to cater to rich men, to give them a good time. There is great competition among bars and when the men who own them don't make a profit, the hostesses pay the price. She has a brother who has a son with polio. He is cowering leech. Men come on to her, but she knows what they really want. This is a rather inspiring film, despite its dark subject matter, because she manages to rise above the hand dealt to her. The stairs are a symbol of the Sisyphuseian battle that she wages from one day to the next. I'm hoping to find another film or two by this director, if they have been distributed.

Ironical look at roles of women in Japanese society

[nisquire · 9/10 · 17 April 2020]

The stairs Keiko ascends to get to her job as bar hostess descend, too. The film, probably particular to Japanese society of the time, shows how women must descend and stoop to men to have a secure station in life. It's almost like the problem of Lily in Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth." Women such as Lily, who are not low born but have no money of their own or a job or business to tend to, are forced to depend on men. And it's a retelling in its way of Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria," released three years earlier (in 1957). The ending of this movie echoes that of Fellini's film. But proof of the correspondence occurs earlier: when Keiko is talking at night on the street in the Ginza with the man, a customer, she wants, on an illuminated sign in the background is the name "Cabiria."

A great movie about ascending

[mmozaf · 9/10 · 10 April 2020]

Maybe you think its a movie about a bar woman and her communications but in my opinion its about women's ways to climbing the stairs of society

Behind the painted smile.

[brogmiller · 9/10 · 11 November 2022]

Mikio Naruse, a director virtually ignored in the West until after his death, reached his creative peak in the 1950's and this film is considered by many to be his magnum opus.

His long takes and simple camera positioning have inevitably invited comparisons with Yasujiro Ozu. Although Naruse may not be as 'stylistically pure' as his eminent contemporary, for this viewer at any rate his characters, especially his women, have more freedom of expression which allows for greater interplay.

Here, he and his editor Eiji Ooi have ensured a narrative flow whilst Masao Tamei's cinematography is luminous.

When asked about Naruse's methods of direction, the outstanding Hideko Takamine, who appeared for him seventeen times said: "I never felt I was doing much in his films." Her magnificent performance in this as the luckless Keiko simply affirms that in front of the camera little is good, less is better. She is complemented here, as she was in 'Floating Clouds', by the excellent Masayuki Mori with whom she has 'chemistry' in spades.

Keiko's final close-up after having once more climbed the stairs that ultimately lead nowhere, is one of the most touching on film. One is left wondering what her future will hold which is the measure of a great actress and a great director.

Surprising

[LeRoyMarko · 9/10 · 8 December 2018]

I must admit this is the first movie I see from Mikio Naruse. And I was pleasantly surprised. It's very well acted and filmed. It offers a sombre look at life, relationships, love and all of that.

High Drama!

[net_orders · 9/10 · 18 July 2016]

Viewed on DVD. Restoration = ten (10) stars. This is an excellent film which invites (almost "demands") repeat viewings. Always the mark of film excellence! The movie depicts the financial challenges faced by and very limited career opportunities available to urban Japanese women even in the midst of their country's remarkable economic recovery during the 1960's. Japan's persistent paternalistic culture is tightly woven into the script. Leading actress Hideko Takamine delivers a drop-dead, stunning performance. She is joined by talented supporting actresses and actors who are members of the director's stock-company family. Wide-screen, black-and-white cinematography is first rate. So is the editing. Some day-time location shots capture Tokyo as it was, while highly-detailed "exterior" studio sets may have captured Tokyo as it might have been (especially its alleyways and at night). Film score sounds original and integrates well with other component parts of the movie. Line readings are easily understood, sound is consistently clear, and subtitles are fine. What's not to like?! Highly recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

A mellow, fluid, aching masterpiece

[vikram-pathania · 9/10 · 27 July 2020]

Lovely. Spartan in its sets, the movie keeps centre stage a small cast of characters. The lead actress won over my heart right away - a gentle, beautiful bar girl in post war Tokyo who maintains a graceful dignity in a difficult profession. She copes with demanding employers, unscrupulous rivals, and a family that depends on her. The movie deals in well known tropes - rich but lonely old men bored with their wives and seeking out the company of vivacious young girls in a night district. And yet, not for a single scene felt sleazy or gratuitous. There is an underlying sadness, a sense of the bar girl being hopelessly trapped. And yet the last scene was uplifting. After being tricked by a womaniser, and then taken to bed forcibly by a besotted lover, she comports herself with great dignity as she comes to bid farewell to this lover and his family at the train station (he avoids looking at her out of shame and embarrassment), and then returns to her life with a brave smile.

It's 9 O'Clock On A Saturday, The Regular Crowd Shuffles In

[mmallon4 · 9/10 · 1 February 2023]

Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi, the three big boys of Japanese cinema, but who is the fourth Beatle in this group of filmmakers? It would have to be one Mikio Naruse, a director in the genre of Shomin-geki - realist films which focus on the everyday lives of the lower to middle class. With this review, I will do what little I can to get this unsung master of cinema the attention he deserves.

Hideko Takamine is Keiko "Mama" Yashiro, the titular heroine of When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, the hostess with the mostest working in a bar within Tokyo's Ginza district, one of the most expensive and luxurious districts in the world. The profession of bar hostess is very much a Japanese phenomenon, primarily female staff who cater to men seeking drinking and attentive conversations. Regardless of what exactly defines a bar vs. Pub vs. Nightclub, the establishments featured in When A Woman Ascends The Stairs are of the highest class with the bar deco seen throughout the film being to absolutely die for. When A Woman Ascends The Stairs is one of the best examples of a film to really capture the essence of the nocturnal urban jungle with this dark and brooding melodrama being shot in velvety black & white with stunning widescreen cinematography. This mood is also exemplified right from the opening credits with its Saul Bass-style minimalist illustrations of bar interiors accompanied by the music score courtesy of Toshiro Mayuzumi, comprised of very soothing, xylophone-infused, 60's-style lounge music (sadly no soundtrack release or isolated score appears to exist). With this setting, When A Woman Ascends The Stairs has a Casablanca-like flavour with a cast (featuring many character actors) conducting conversations with sublime etiquette amongst a smoke-drenched atmosphere.

It is established in a subtle manner that there is an expectation for hostesses to sleep with their clients. Keiko outright says she is a conservative woman who doesn't want to lower her standards as she battles to make a living while retaining her self-respect as well as staying faithful to her late husband. Keiko does not actually enjoy the job of being a bar hostess, hence the metaphor of the film's title - ascending the stairs is an uphill battle to survive as she faces her job and life in general with a fake smile and glass in hand (at one point she is desperate enough to even visit a fortune teller to fork out a future path). Keiko is given the nickname of Mama-san, which I do find odd as she is only 30 years old but I guess that is still past the spring of her life. Due to this, she faces a crossroads in her life if she wants to maintain her standards - get married or open her own bar.

In one key scene, Keiko speaks to the bar's owner after closing time whom she tells Keiko, "Isn't your kimono rather subdued? A colourful one is better" (according to the film's opening, Takamine herself designed the film's costuming). A lot of implications come out of this one request and it is by another woman, enforcing a culture and expectation for hostesses to sleep with their clients. That brings to mind the other famous form of Japanese hostess, the geisha (of whom during the film one does appear in the bar Keiko works in much to her displeasure). There do exist a number of parallels between When A Woman Ascends The Stairs and Kenji Mizoguchi's A Geisha (1953), both detailing women who are being forced to sleep with clients in order to stay afloat with such cultures being enforced by the female owners of the establishments - I do recommend both pictures for a double feature. Following the despair brought on by her failure to either get married or open her own bar, Keiko does eventually sleep with a client, Mr Fujisaki (Nobuhiko), or I should more accurately say is raped by him. Yet the morning after she expresses happiness to Fujisaki and expresses her love to him (make of that what you will). The closest the film has to a purveyor of morality is the bar manager Kenichi Komatsu (Tatsuya Nakadai), as he always refuses the advances of women in the bar and holds great admiration for Keiko for her conservative standards ("You can't find many women like her in Ginza").

When A Woman Ascends The Stairs features a lot of talk about money and the pursuit of it (we even see the use of the ancient abacus is still in effect as electronic calculators were not yet the norm) from unpaid bills from Keiko's last bar to the investment of her own place to the money she has to send to her ungrateful family. Even in this heartless world, the talk of finance doesn't even halt when Keiko is recovering from a stomach ulcer but more significantly, in the wake of a woman's suicide over her own financial woes, creditors make an appearance at her funeral to ask the family for the money she owed them (debt cancellation after death doesn't appear to exist). All this discussion of money does slightly work against the film's favour to the western viewer unless you are an expert in Japanese currency as due to the nature of the Japanese yen and inflationary changes since 1960, it's hard to quantify just how much money the character's in the film are discussing. Nonetheless, I have done the research to quantify several key amounts mentioned throughout the picture. The 170,000 yen of Keiko's unpaid bills from her last place is approximately 7,500 US dollars in 2023, her 30,000 yen apartment rent is 1,700 dollars and the 20,000 yen she gives to her family every month is 1,100 dollars.

By the conclusion of When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, nothing is resolved, Keiko is back at square one and has resigned to her fate. Hideko Takamine has that balance of lovability but also a strong sense of perseverance and stoicism and with the universality of many films from Japan's golden age of cinema and regardless of the specifics of Keiko's story, being stuck in a vicious circle of which there is no easy escape is one many a viewer can relate to with the continued ascension of those stairs.

Unflinching slice of life...

[poe426 · 8/10 · 2 September 2007]

Reality, particularly for working women on their own, could be harsh back in the day. I know, because I witnessed it firsthand, on a daily basis. Being poor, my mother had to make a trek- on foot, because there was no money for bus fare- of 20 miles a day to and from a factory job that left her hunched from decades spent bent over a sewing machine. Watching WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, I was reminded (again) of her selfless sacrifice- something that occurred on a daily basis for 50 years. This is the first Naruse film I've had the chance to see- but, based on this one, I fully intend to see more. His characters may exist in the "grey areas" just this side of the shadows, but they always seem to be in the ascension. It's satisfying to learn that there were filmmakers out there who had their cinematic stuff together enough to do films like this. They should be celebrated.

A great filmmaker in search of a plot

[pottedstu · 8/10 · 23 July 2007]

Compared to Ozu or Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse's films are much lighter in tone, with more humour, and less of the overwhelming sense of pain and tragedy. Sometimes this works really well, offering stories that are emotionally involving but not morbidly extreme, but in this film I think it results in a film that's shapeless and drifts past the viewer without really going anywhere in particular.

The performances are excellent; of course Hideko Takamine is wonderful in the leading role running a hostess bar, but Reiko Dan is great fun as a young, flirty, ambitious hostess, and Tatsuya Nakadai as the loyal young bar manager is like a hero of the French New Wave, quiet, cool, and intense. Keiko's customers at the bar are to an extent caricatures, but are nicely drawn.

The film offers a full and fair-minded account of the world of hostess bars, with Naruse's usual interest in financial matters and the minutiae of life. But despite the occasional sad event, the cumulative impression is not of a woman in a desperately tragic situation, but more a case of just one damn thing after another. It lurches from moments of high drama to silliness to tragedy to the mundane, failing to achieve a consistent attitude or tone.

There are perhaps too many characters, so that while some relationships are clear and powerful, others pass by with little emotional effect. Unlike in Iwashigumo (Summer Clouds) the main character of this film isn't heroic, isn't keeping up any tradition, and doesn't have any particular claim on our affections. Her defence about needing a fancy lifestyle and expensive apartment for her job, and her attitude to her family, don't seem likely to endear her to the viewer either.

Overall, it feels like a set of great talents wandering around in an inadequate storyline. It's not enough to present the facts; a great film needs to use them to show you something more general about life. And something more profound than, "Well, every job has its problems."

Good

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 8/10 · 7 June 2012]

What lifts this film from being merely good to arguably great, is that never is the heroine of the film portrayed as a victim. She is not at the whims of a cruel paternalistic and sexist society. She has her opportunities, but ignores some, and squanders others. Her rationale, as example, for turning down Komatsu's proposal of marriage- the second such proposal she's received in a brief period, is simply silly, and a cover for her own willful pride and arrogance. If he is, to her, the embodiment of the Ginza, and she must thus reject his advances, then why does she go back to the lifestyle she claims to detest? She, therefore, is the sole architect of her life's stasis, if not failure. No one else. No thing else. So, the film is a sad one; not as sad and downbeat as Theo Angelopoulos's Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow, but perhaps even more depressing because, whereas the female heroine of that film fully earns the viewers' sympathies for all she has suffered needlessly, Naruse's heroine, by virtue of helping to fix her own sad state, does not even garner the grace of pity from most viewers. Her motto is, 'I hated climbing those stairs more than anything. But once I was up, I would take each day as it came.'

Trite, but admirable. And these are qualities that many can relate to. Mama's Sisyphan life is of her own making, but that is also, in an odd way, an admirable thing. She is not a mistress, not a prostitute, just a working woman trying to survive. And, unlike Cabiria, at the end of Nights Of Cabiria, the odds are that Mama will not just make it, but prosper, in her own way. This, in fact, puts her in league, along with other similarities, with the widow, played by Setsuko Hara, in Tokyo Story. Hers is surely a lonely life, and a frustrating one, but it is not one void of hope. Mama may not be the best example of what a woman of singular means can do by exercising her free will, but a freely deficient life is, in many, if not most, aspects, a superior life to those who cede their volition for material gains. Mama has seen this close up; so do the film's viewers. Her choice may not be ours, but it is hers, and, in The Ginza of old, it seems, that meant a lot. It still does, to those in the arts, and those in art itself.