Japn 340 When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Naruse creates an affecting scenario of modern Japanese society and the pitfalls a woman in such a patriarchal society must face.
[His film] gets underneath all the glitter and becomes an involving character study about holding one's dignity in the face of mounting anguish.
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Mikio Naruse ("Late Chrysanthemums"/"The Wiser Age") is one of Tokyo's leading filmmakers but has not drawn much attention outside of Japan. Using the feminist driven script by Ryuzo Kikushima, Naruse tells a seemingly soap opera melodrama about a geisha girl that explodes in a most subtle way as it gets underneath all the glitter and becomes an involving character study about holding one's dignity in the face of mounting anguish. Naruse sympathizes with his put upon protagonist Keiko, affectionately called in the trade Mama (Hideko Takamine), who is faced with overcoming almost daily betrayals by her men clients and with meeting severe economic pressures to stay afloat in her highly competitive world. The hard-working beautiful thirty-year-old bar hostess in Tokyo's Ginza district is a charming and demure widow who placed a letter with her beloved hubby's ashes that stated she would love no one else, and to avoid poverty began her bar career with the hopes of earning big money. Every evening she ascends the stairs to work in the bar while dressed in the traditional kimono. Mama says "After it gets dark, I have to climb the stairs, and that's what I hate. But once I'm up, I can take whatever happens." Mama's ambition is to own her own bar in the exclusive area; but, she's saddled with supporting a money-grubbing and nagging elderly mother and a useless divorced brother in debt whose young son has polio and needs a further expensive operation. Unlike the other geishas Mama has not indulged in the usual vices associated with the Ginza gals and has earned the deep affection of the other geishas for sticking to her high ideals. This has earned her the respect of her platonic loyal wealthy businessmen clients such as Fujisaki (Masayuki Mori), Goda (Ganjiro Nakamura) and Sekine (Daisuke Katoh). It has also earned her the deep respect of her lovestruck handsome young bartender/manager Komatsu (Tatsuya Nakadai), who would do anything for her love. Mama realizes that at 30 she must get a place of her own or marry, as she's getting too old to depend on the whims of her owner to be kept on as head hostess. When she recruits money from her wealthy clients for her business venture, she finds it distasteful and in the end disappointing; and, furthermore when she's most vulnerable she receives a dubious marriage proposal from one of her clients and later finds herself compromised by a married client who rejects her love. This brings about a heated confrontation with her frustrated jealous manager who tells her how much he now reviles her, but still asks for her hand in marriage. In the end faced with illness and an alcohol problem, Keiko remains undaunted and independent as she ascends the stairs to the bar once again and in a close-up puts on her game face to show she's happy to be with her customers.
Naruse creates an affecting scenario of modern Japanese society and the pitfalls a woman in such a patriarchal society must face who tries to hold her head up while working in a traditionally accepted but disreputable profession. The daily climb up the stairs becomes like a religious ritual whereas Keiko can put aside her personal tragedies and find courage to endure in the hedonistic world she is courageously trying to walk such a fine line in. It's a dark and emotionally drawn out film that sublimely brings to light the pain underneath all the smiles of the heroine.
REVIEWED ON 7/18/2006 GRADE: A-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
http://homepages.sover.net/~ozus/whenawomanascendsthestairs.htmWhen a Woman Ascends The Stairs
Tue Jun 26 2007
The centrepiece of BFI Southbank’s Mikio Naruse season (see Other Cinema), this brilliant melodrama is a contender for reissue of the year. It’s a film which encapsulates the strengths of this masterly Japanese director whose work has barely been seen here. He’s known as a great director of actresses, and his signature performer Hideko Takamine is outstanding as a middle-aged hostess struggling to maintain her self-respect in the sleazy whisky-lubricated environs of Ginza’s bar circuit, as she wrestles with the dilemma that the admirers who could offer her financial security demand her ‘reputation’ in exchange. Battling to support her family and keep her own long-suppressed emotions in check, each night that she climbs the stairs to smile at the clientele is a painful reminder of her limited options. Fascinating as social study, painstakingly assured as storytelling, this compares with Sirk’s ‘All That Heaven Allows’ and Fassbinder’s ‘Fear Eats the Soul’ as a heartbreaking portrait of a defiant woman outflanked by the repressive mores around her. A new classic.Author: Trevor Johnstonhttp://www.timeout.com/london/film/when-a-woman-ascends-the-stairs
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When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)Bar GirlsBy Jeffrey M. Anderson Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse (1905-1969) was a contemporary of Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, but for some reason never received the same kind of international recognition. Last year an acclaimed retrospective of his films toured New York, the Bay Area and other cities, and now the Criterion Collection has released this, Naruse's first film to find its way to DVD. In his 1998 book Totally, Tenderly, Tragically, Phillip Lopate admitted that it's difficult after only one viewing of one film to discover a style in Naruse, unlike his three colleagues. Moreover, his subject matter, melodramatic stories about women, is not as flashy or as noble as other masterworks. But even a casual viewing of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs shows what a gifted humanist Naruse was. The film is set in Japan's post-war Ginza district, where unmarried women had two choices: either work in a bar, getting paid to flirt with drunken men, or open a bar of their own. Keiko (Hideko Takamine), a popular "mama" at one bar, watches as her younger colleagues leave for other jobs, drawing all the customers away. Keiko is still beautiful, but she's not getting any younger, and the suggestion is that it's time for her to open her own bar. The trouble is, to raise money, she has to suck up to her wealthy male patrons. As the film opens, she ascends the stairs to the bar, explaining in voiceover how much she disdains it. Naruse paints Keiko as a traditional, steady swatch in the middle of a modernized Japan, surrounded by booze, lights and men who adore her, but remaining sober and rebuffing them all (except one). His style is not dissimilar to that of Ozu -- straight on, long shots -- but Naruse's focus is more specific. In When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Naruse is more about capturing the psychological realism of his lead woman, rather than Ozu's family dynamics. Ultimately Keiko is alone, with all odds stacked against her, but she keeps trying. She keeps ascending the stairs. http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/classic/whenwomstairs.shtml |
