Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki (1960)

User Rating:

8.3/10   

Director:

Mikio Naruse

Writer:

Ryûzô Kikushima (writer)

Release Date:

25 June 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

This is the story of Mama, a.k.a. Keiko, a middle-aged geisha who must choose to either get married or buy a bar of her own...

Plot Keywords:

Money | Bar | Widow | Ginza | Brother

Cast

Hideko Takamine	...	Keiko Yashiro
Masayuki Mori	...	Nobuhiko Fujisaki
Reiko Dan	...	Junko Inchihashi
Tatsuya Nakadai	...	Kenichi Komatsu, the manager
Daisuke Katô	...	Matsukichi Sekine
Ganjiro Nakamura	...	Goda
Eitarô Ozawa	...	Minobe
Keiko Awaji	...	Yuri
Jun Tatara
Yû Fujiki
Masao Oda
Ken Mitsuda
Chikako Hosokawa
Sadako Sawamura

Also Known As:

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (USA) (literal English title)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Perspecta Sound encoding) (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

UK:PG | Portugal:M/12

Filming Locations:

Tokyo, Japan

Company:

Toho Company

A great filmmaker in search of a plot

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."