When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (no 49)

 

by Allan Fish

(Japan 1960 111m) DVD1/2

Aka.Onna ga kaidan o agaru took

Crying in my dream

p  Ryuzo Kikushima  d  Mikio Naruse  w  Ryuzo Kikushima  ph  Masao Tamai  ed  Mikio Naruse  m  Toshiro Mayuzumi  art  Satoshi Chuko  cos  Hideko Takamine

Hideko Takamine (Keiko Yashiro), Masayuki Mori (Nobuhiko Fujisaki), Reiko Dan (Junko), Tatsuya Nakadai (Komatsu), Daisuke Kato (Matsukichi Sekine), Ganjiro Nakamura (Goda), Eitaro Ozawa (Minobe), Keiko Awaji (Yuri),

In 1960 world cinema was undergoing a radical reshaping of its landscape.  Works such as L’Avventura, La Dolce Vita, Paris Nous Appartient and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were making their mark in Europe, Hollywood saw The Apartment, Psycho and Spartacus come and go, while The Cloud Capped Star was the best film to leave India not made by Satyajit Ray.  Japan meanwhile, had not recovered from the death of Mizoguchi, was soon to be mourning Ozu equally prematurely, and Kurosawa’s return to his roots with The Bad Sleep Well did not fare that well with the critics.  All of which brings us neatly to Mikio Naruse.  He’s the director most overshadowed by the canonical trio of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa.  Indeed, if asked to name the great Japanese directors, most film buffs would name Ichikawa, Imamura, Oshima, Teshigahara, Kobayashi and Kinoshita before Naruse as well, and yet he was one of the great masters.  His record needs straightening. 

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