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May 21, 2021 · In When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, one key movement is similarly repeated four times: Takamine ascending the stairs to get to her bar. The first time she does this, she tells us on the voice-over: “I hated climbing these stairs more than anything.
- The Life of Keiko
- A Touch of Sirk
- Tender Tragedy
- Final Thoughts: When A Woman Ascends The Stairs
What’s presented is a different type of life, even as it develops its own fashionable conception of the world. Keiko or “Mama-san” (Hideko Takamine), as she is known by all, is one of the women living in this world. She is a kind of hostess. If it’s a euphemism for something more, I can’t entirely say nor does the film try and define it, choosing i...
If there is any other film I found myself cycling back to, it was actually Imitation of Life directed by the master of luscious American melodrama Douglas Sirk. It too was about a strong single woman trying to make her way in a world all but dominated by men. If it was true in America, it was even more prevalent in an albeit modernized Tokyo. Hidek...
I cannot speak for others, but When a Woman Ascends The Stairstears my heart out, especially because I have seen elements of this world first hand, even if only in the periphery. It starts being a film about love once Keiko finally relents and opens herself up to be hurt. She’s finally human and she loves, and the scenes that evolve out of this dev...
My last thought is only this. Setsuko Hara was the first Japanese actress I truly recognized across a body of work; she was a luminary personality, and Hideko Takaminedeserves to hold the same company, proving herself to be an incomparable muse in her own right. The performance she gives here is yet again so potent with the range and verisimilitude...
When a Woman Ascend the Stairs is a gem from Naruse, unmatched in his virtuosity for tackling themes about women and society. Keiko’s ritualistic ascending of the stairs is now a classic cinematic allusion of the social rigors faced by modern women in materialist and pacifist Japan, for whom the means of economic survival are limited.
We see she is intelligent, prone to human failings, but also lacking the willpower to really change her life. It is a great character and an excellent performance by Takamine. She, however, is not alone in good performances.
- Mikio Naruse
- 1960
- Drama, Sex, Historical
Mikio Naruse's When A Woman Ascends The Stairs is a piercing study of the throes of women amidst post-war Japan. Depressingly cyclical, thronged with parallels and foreshadowing, the film examines the world these women live in: male-dominated and male-dependent.
- (7.8K)
- TOHO
- Mikio Naruse
In Mikio Naruse's insightful yet grim 'women's picture' melodrama - a critique of Japan's patriarchal society in the post-war country, in the person of an aging, 30 year-old geisha girl supervisor, working in a disreputable, competitive business in Tokyo's Ginza district that catered to married male industrialists ("to show them a good time"):
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Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs shows the largely unsung yet widely beloved master Naruse at his most socially exacting and profoundly emotional.
