When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Director: Mikio Naruse

1960 / 111min / 35mm

The nocturnal rhythms and rituals of the neon-lit Ginza come incandescently alive in Naruse’s late-career masterpiece, at once a magisterial recapitulation of, and thrilling variation on, his recurring theme of female integrity within an increasingly materialist world. Shot in pristine black-and-white Tohoscope by Naruse’s stalwart cinematographer Masao Tamai, the film fittingly renders a world of deceptive appearances and seductive surfaces. Navigating this world is Hideko Takamine’s Keiko, a widowed bar hostess who, night after night, climbs the stairs to one bar then another, as she flits through a revolving Rolodex of suitors from Tokyo’s corporate world. Brilliantly played by Takamine, rivaling her performance in Floating Clouds, Keiko personifies the Naruse heroine as she crosses the threshold between the chilly postwar ’50s and the cool postmodern ’60s.

Introduction by writer Phillip Lopate on Sunday, June 8th