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All I can say is that watching films such as these keeps one young and filled with anticipation. “ It’s awful to get old“, one of the other women bemoans. “ It’s either marriage or a bar of my own” she exclaims, knowing perhaps she is not destined to achieve either. She persists to the point of truly being. Not as beautiful as Kyo, as homely as Hara or as motherly as Tanaka, she shows here why Japanese critics bracket her along with those immortals, a true descendant of Yamada’s unfortunate women for Mizuguchi in the thirties. Most credit for making Keiko’s plight so tangible must go to Naruse, but Takamine deserves real praise for her striking performance. Only when she ascends the eponymous stairs to the bar does she begin to fall. She’s a fallen woman, too, but she ironically falls upstairs. She may continually get kicked down, but she keeps a-comin’. Like Fellini’s prostitute protagonist, Naruse’s heroine resigns herself to her fate and accepts it with fresh enthusiasm and optimism. However, in spite of the gorgeous monochrome ‘Scope photography and the use of American ballads in the bar that recall earlier Hollywood noirs, it’s perhaps one throwaway ingredient in the mise-en-scene that truly parallels the west the neon sign reading ‘Cabiria’ opposite the bar. Naruse’s heroine wears perfume that recalls Sabu, her place of work, the immortal Ginza Bar Carton, may just be the distant infant predecessor of Tarantino’s later House of the Blue Leaves and the girls who populate it the precursors of Seijun’s whores in Gate of Flesh. What perhaps makes Naruse’s film so endlessly absorbing is that it combines a Mizoguchian fascination with the plight of women and an intimacy not too far distanced from Ozu with a fascination with all things western (including western movies) that influenced Kurosawa’s gangster pics. It was the first Naruse I ever saw – I have been lucky enough to see quite a few since, and that it still stands to me as one of his great films speaks volumes for its power. Which brings us to the film’s inclusion in the list and, though I’d like to say that it was chosen from a list of Naruse films seen, it would just be a ruse, like Thomson’s. Such is Naruse’s near anonymity in the west that even his individual films are shrouded in mystery (try searching them out in any printed film guide if you can). Commemorative seasons of Naruse’s work in the English speaking world just haven’t happened, to the extent that even David Thomson feigned not seeing any of his films until setting his own record straight in 2002. The most obvious fact to put to the court was that Naruse’s films, unlike those of the directors listed above, have generally only been released in their native Japan. 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. He’s the director most overshadowed by the canonical trio of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa. All of which brings us neatly to Mikio Naruse. 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. 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. In 1960 world cinema was undergoing a radical reshaping of its landscape. 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), P Ryuzo Kikushima d Mikio Naruse w Ryuzo Kikushima ph Masao Tamai ed Mikio Naruse m Toshiro Mayuzumi art Satoshi Chuko cos Hideko Takamine
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