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Other reviews by Howard Schumann
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Three by Naruse When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki) "After it gets dark, I have to climb the stairs, and that's what I hate. But once I'm up, I can take whatever happens."- Mama
Keiko is a graceful and charming woman who wears a traditional kimono but is under pressure by her devoted manager Kenichi Komatsu (Tatsuya Nakadai) to modernize her wardrobe and upgrade her living arrangements to keep up with growing Western influences. Of the many men in her life, three monopolize her attention: Mr. Fujisaki (Masayuki Mori), Mr. Sekine (Daisuke Kato), and Mr. Minobe (Ganjiro Nakamura). Each relationship starts out with promise but each leads to severe disappointment. She receives a marriage proposal from Mr. Sekine that turns out to be bogus. She tells Mr. Fujisaki that she loves him but promised her husband she would not remarry. Nonetheless, she is crushed when she learns that he has been transferred to Osaka. The film complements the dramatic action with Keiko's inner dialogue. Backed by a cool jazz score that evokes the mood of Tokyo streets in the early evening, she contemplates how most women in Tokyo are going to their home when her work is first starting. In another sequence she muses, "Around midnight Tokyo's 16,000 bar women go home. The best go home by car. Second-rate ones by streetcar. The worst go home with their customers." As Keiko struggles financially to help her aging mother, her brother who must pay a lawyer to stay out of prison, and her nephew who needs an operation, she knows that she would be better off if she would relax her standards, but she will not compromise her integrity. The stairs she must climb each night to her bar become a symbol both of her triumphant determination and her personal tragedy. "As the sound fades,
She has become cynical about men and has turned her attention to money, particularly real estate speculation and loaning money to her friends, Nobu (Sadako Sawamura), Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa), and Tomi (Yuko Mochizuki), all former geishas. Kin's friends live in meager circumstances and complain about how Kin has become greedy and Tomi spends considerable time gambling to try and make ends meet. Both Tomi and Tamae are in the process of losing their children. Tamae's son is leaving to work in the coalmines in Hokkaido, and Tomi's daughter has decided to accept a marriage proposal from an older man. Both resist the change in their circumstances but come to accept it as inevitable. Two male friends visit Kin, Seki a former lover with whom she once contemplated double suicide, and Tabe (Ken Uehara), another lover who she looks forward to seeing again after many years. Her mood is upbeat but soon turns to resentment when she discovers that the two men are only interested in borrowing money. Naruse cuts between two extended sequences seamlessly as Kin confronts Tabe and Tomi and Tamae console each other over the loss of their children The dialogue is extremely natural and the characters are women of strength who, though their future does not seem bright, refuse to see themselves merely as victims. Late Chrysanthemums has the simplicity, humor, and stoic acceptance of life prominent in the films of Ozu and is a bittersweet reminder of the slow passing of time and the comfort that memory and companionship can bring along the way.
Michiyo is at first welcoming when Hatsunosuke's niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki) comes to visit but soon becomes annoyed and jealous when her husband takes her on a tour of Osaka and pays an inordinate amount of attention to her charms. When her dissatisfaction becomes crystallized, she decides to return to Tokyo to visit her mother (Haruko Sugimura). She is torn between wanting to find a job and remaining separated or returning to her husband to continue with the struggle. She writes a letter to Hatsunosuke ostensibly to say she will not return but it is never mailed. The way her ambivalence is resolved will cause some consternation for modern day women's rights advocates, but seems appropriate under the circumstances and I left the theater feeling elated. ©2006 Howard Schumann |
Widowed Tokyo bar hostess Keiko is in her thirties and thinking about her limited choices. She could open her own bar but this would require financial help from clients and perhaps favors she is unwilling to give, or she could get married, but that would mean breaking a vow to her late husband that she would never love another man. Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is an exquisite character study about a woman caught in a trap of financial obligations who is forced to perform a job she dislikes in order to stay afloat. It is both a depiction of one woman's courage and perseverance and a commentary on the limited opportunities for women in Japan in the sixties. Hideko Takamine is unforgettable as Keiko, the beleaguered hostess who is affectionately called "mama" by the younger barmaids. 
Sadness
and nostalgia permeate Late Chrysanthemums,
a 1954 film by Japanese auteur Mikio Naruse, now undergoing
a retrospective of his long unavailable films thanks to James
Quandt of Cinematheque Ontario and The Japan Foundation. Based
on three stories by Fumiko Hayashi, Late Chrysanthemums
tells the story of four retired geishas, now middle-aged,
whose lives have become full of disappointment and regret.
Performances are uniformly outstanding, particularly that
of Haruko Sugimura, who starred in Yasujiro Ozu's films 
Repast is the first of many films by Mikio Naruse to be based on the stories of Fumiko Hayashi, in this case on Hayashi's last unfinished novel. Repast is a family drama set in Osaka and Tokyo shortly after the end of World War II. Economic circumstances make life difficult for Michiyo, an Osaka housewife played by Ozu regular Setsuko Hara in an exceptionally nuanced performance. She has been married for five years and the dream of a better life has faded. Her husband Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) has a low paying job and her life consists only of the repetitive chores of cleaning, washing, and cooking with no promise of a better future, a fact that she draws constant attention to.