When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
(Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki)
Country: JAP
Technical: bw/2.35:1 111m
Director: Mikio Naruse
Cast: Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan, Tatsuya Nakadai
Synopsis:
A bar hostess privately longs either to marry or buy her own premises, but the collection of unpaid bills, the slipperiness of her wealthy admirers and the demands of her family on her money, place intolerable constraints on her future.
Review:
Naruse's poignant film centres around the noble Keiko, cleaving to memories of her late husband and fastidiously holding on to her chastity as if to her last vestige of dignity. Takamine is superb and offers an object lesson in the subtle eastern art of the smile that conceals a multiplicity of meanings. The cinematography is unfortunately unattractively muddy, but there is much to interest the eye in the detail of performances and mise en scène, and the picture is an important contemporary entry in the tradition of period films concerning themselves with the unhappy lot of the geisha.
(Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki)
Country: JAP
Technical: bw/2.35:1 111m
Director: Mikio Naruse
Cast: Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan, Tatsuya Nakadai
Synopsis:
A bar hostess privately longs either to marry or buy her own premises, but the collection of unpaid bills, the slipperiness of her wealthy admirers and the demands of her family on her money, place intolerable constraints on her future.
Review:
Naruse's poignant film centres around the noble Keiko, cleaving to memories of her late husband and fastidiously holding on to her chastity as if to her last vestige of dignity. Takamine is superb and offers an object lesson in the subtle eastern art of the smile that conceals a multiplicity of meanings. The cinematography is unfortunately unattractively muddy, but there is much to interest the eye in the detail of performances and mise en scène, and the picture is an important contemporary entry in the tradition of period films concerning themselves with the unhappy lot of the geisha.
(Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki)
Country: JAP
Technical: bw/2.35:1 111m
Director: Mikio Naruse
Cast: Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan, Tatsuya Nakadai
Synopsis:
A bar hostess privately longs either to marry or buy her own premises, but the collection of unpaid bills, the slipperiness of her wealthy admirers and the demands of her family on her money, place intolerable constraints on her future.
Review:
Naruse's poignant film centres around the noble Keiko, cleaving to memories of her late husband and fastidiously holding on to her chastity as if to her last vestige of dignity. Takamine is superb and offers an object lesson in the subtle eastern art of the smile that conceals a multiplicity of meanings. The cinematography is unfortunately unattractively muddy, but there is much to interest the eye in the detail of performances and mise en scène, and the picture is an important contemporary entry in the tradition of period films concerning themselves with the unhappy lot of the geisha.