Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1960 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan
WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse’s finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo’s very modern postwar Ginza district, who entertains businessmen after work. 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.
Up Next in Starring Tatsuya Nakadai
-
Sanjuro
Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1962 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiju KobayashiToshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Akira Kurosawa’s tightly paced, beautifully composed SANJURO. In this sly companion piece to YOJIMBO, jaded samurai SANJURO helps an...
-
Kwaidan
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi • 1965 • Japan
Starring Rentaro Mikuni, Keiko Kishi, Katsuo NakamuraAfter more than a decade of sober political dramas and socially minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of...
-
Love Under the Crucifix
Directed by Kinuyo Tanaka • 1962 • Japan
Starring Ineko Arima, Tatsuya Nakadai, Mieko TakamineKinuyo Tanaka’s final work as a director evokes the golden age of Japanese cinema with a large-scale, sixteenth-century-set costume drama. Produced by the independent studio Ninjin Kurabu, LOVE UNDER T...
