Onna Ga Kaidan Wo Agaru Toki (1960) (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs)
Mikio Naruse
Japanese
Mikio Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) could have well unfolded in post-war Los Angeles, in its dark alleys and seedy bars, for it reveals itself as something of a hard-boiled film noir told through the eyes of a woman. Set in the upscale Ginza district of Tokyo, the film centers on a bar manager Keiko (Hideko Takamine), a widow of thirty years, who must choose between remarrying into a respectable family and starting her own joint. Keiko is in a race against time, against the disappearance of her youth, and her tragedy is the tragedy of most women in modern society. Appearance is of paramount importance. “I hate liquor, yet I drink my fill every night” she says. She must be glamorous; she must smell good; she must be young or perish. She must don this Sisyphean role that is decided for her, never to complete her ascent and always returning to the bottom of the eponymous staircase. Positioned somewhere between the cool, satirical detachment of Imamura’s The Insect Woman (1963) and the melodramatic viscosity of Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star (1960), Naruse’s empathetic yet never simplistic film offers no easy way out, not once letting our sympathies get tuned to a particular character. Constructed nearly as a string of conversations – all shot exquisitely in widescreen with striking centralized compositions marked by tense negative space – When a Woman Ascends the Stairs charts a single woman’s ultimately futile stabs at success in a grossly lopsided industrial society. Towards the end of the film, as Keiko ascends the stairs one more time, now more determined perhaps, Naruse’s film nearly attains the spiritual-existential intensity of Winter Light (1963). She can’t go on. She will go on.
July 17, 2012 at 9:25 am
On a slightly divergent note, the 4 chimneys we see behind form the central motif of gosho’s wonderful “Where the chimneys are seen”
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July 23, 2012 at 7:39 am
I haven’t seen Gosho’s film, Richie. Thanks for the tip. Cheers!
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July 23, 2012 at 7:36 am
Unrelated: Any plans to write about Gangs of Wasseypur? Was looking forward to your take on the film.
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July 23, 2012 at 7:40 am
No plans yet, Vikas.
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July 24, 2012 at 10:34 pm
Have you seen the film? How did you like it? I was particularly looking forward to your review as most of the reviews/tweets I read either got carried away (with “We are in a Gaon where a wife spits cuss words at her gangster husband, welcome to new age mature Bollywood” or completely missed the point ( asking questions like “Where was the revenge?”).
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July 31, 2012 at 11:25 pm
Yes, I have, Vikas. And I’m afraid I’m no big fan either. I was, let’s say, put on the back foot with its self-styled, conscious legend-making. Of course, the second part might turn my opinion on its head. Let’s see.
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August 22, 2012 at 7:17 pm
Saw Part 2? Now tell us what you think? Or perhaps I’m asking for too much, but write a post, may be? :-)
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September 9, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Hi Vikas,
Yes, I did see Part 2, and liked it more than Part 1. Very unhinged and unapologetic, with a perverse sense of poetic justice too. Unfortunately, not planning to write on it!
Cheers!
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August 8, 2012 at 3:56 am
Glad to see that you are covering Naruse. This is a great film. I’m intrigued by your reference to film noir. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I peg it as a melodrama, related to that long tradition of ‘suffering women’ stories in Japan. It is a pivotal film in Japanese cinema bridging the transition from classical Japanese cinema to the later New Wave. I’m going to have to think about the Ghatak link – which works through melodrama as genre, but perhaps in not quite the same way in terms of modernism.
I wanted to congratulate you on the publication of your piece in the ‘Inglorious Basterds’ book. I’m afraid I still haven’t seen all of the film yet!
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August 8, 2012 at 7:30 am
Thanks so much, Roy!
True, true. The melodramatic streak is palpable. But the gentle pessimism about people, the idea of a not-so-morally-upright woman trying to make it on her own and the general sense of all-pervasive doom kept reminding me of noir regularly.
Cheers!
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October 9, 2012 at 8:23 am
Great movie, and still sadly one of only two Naruses I’ve seen (the other is Wife! Be Like a Rose). Takamine’s performance is currently cleaning up in the 1960 poll on Wonders.
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October 21, 2012 at 1:22 pm
I haven’t seen WIFE, BE LIKE A ROSE, Joel, but this is by far my favorite Naruse from among the ones I have seen.
Cheers!
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