When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Virtually unknown in this country, Mikio Naruse is the fourth great director of the generation of Ozu, Mizoguchi, and the somewhat younger Kurosawa. (And thus completes my proposed film series for next summer at the Clark, “Four Seasons in Japan: A Cycle of Film Classics.”) The woman in question is Hideko Takamine, new to me but apparently an actress to put beside Setsuko Hara for beauty and sublime expressiveness. She made 17 films with Naruse, and many others as well -- I will be looking for them. The stairs ascend (or descend) to the second-floor bar where she works as an all-round female companion and manager of same, in a Ginza niche between geisha and prostitute. She’s a young widow who has made a name for herself in her world, namely “mama,” but still leads an economically precarious life, and is reaching the age when her options come down to marrying some client or opening her own bar. Scene by scene those options are closed down. In style, Naruse comes across as a pessimistic Ozu. Ozu’s world is sad enough, to be sure, but Naruse’s is bleak, but somehow exhilaratingly so in his quality of precise attention. I was reminded of another favorite film of mine, from the very same year and in the same widescreen intimacy. In The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine is a girl similarly trying to negotiate her assets in a world of businessmen, but here “mama” has no mensch like Jack Lemmon to rescue her. Now that I’ve seen one Naruse, I want to see many more, but this is the only one available on dvd. Here’s hoping the the Criterion Collection gets such a response to this that they come out with an Eclipse boxed set, as they have for Ozu and Mizoguchi. (1960, dvd, n.) *8*