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 masterpiece

Beautiful film about a ginza bar girl approaching the age of thirty - an age at which, she claims, a girl of her profession can either "get married or open a bar of her own." It is a film about how her quest for one and then the other ends in disappointment. Most significantly, though, it is a vehicle through which filmmaker Naruse expresses his view that life is a vicious cycle of disappointments at every turn, a fate which no human action to fight it can deter. The film is breathtakingly shot in widescreen black and white, adding to the film's already bittersweet poignancy. It's a wonderful piece of cinema - a quietly rewarding and remarkably unforced masterpiece. "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" is, quite simply, a thing of beauty and brilliance, and it is a great work of art.