377 When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

[HerrSchreck]

Maginificent. Beautiful transfer, wonderfully lucid narrative, yet deftly subtle melodrama. Great dvd, excellent interview with Nakadai, may even listen to the Richie commentary somewhere down the line.

[colinr0380]

DVD Times review.

[unclehulot]

I know I'm supposed to buy this and send the message that more Naruse is what I want.....but why the heck is this of all releases, not carried by Netflix, who at least will usually get all Criterions that are new titles (as opposed to re-masterings)?

[scalesojustice]

agree, i emailed netflix via the title suggestion and suggested it and made sure to point out that their competition carries it. i would recommend others in our boat to do the same.

i thought it would be like with jigoku, where they didn't list it until that day. netflix has been failing me recently.

[Steven H]

The Richie commentary is filled to the brim with a lot of the things I've been hearing for some time about Naruse (the most valuable bits are the words coming from those who worked with him, about his style of direction and attitude) and I'm going to use that as a jumping off point to talk about the film.

There is a definitely inscrutable quality to almost all of Naruse's work, and this film is no exception. Take Mori Masayuki for example. What is he really feeling? You never know. To me he really comes alive as an actor in Naruse's films (also Floating Clouds and Late Chrysanthemums), where he seems at best an in human puppet in Ugetsu and Seven Samurai (not necessarily a bad thing.) Is he taking advantage of Takamine in this and Floating Clouds, or is he, like he says (excuses) in character, not leading his own fate. As he looks into the window at the end of the film, is he awe struck by her motives/actions, pondering what a horrible or amazing life he's leaving behind, or merely playing it cool so the wife doesn't think anything's up. Maybe it's all of those things. The three films included in the MoC set also live up to this, but in different ways. Sugimura in Flowing and Hara in Repast and Sound of the Mountain seem nigh impenetrable.

Richie relates an anecdote from Toyoda Shiro (who he also calls obscure, even though he's much more well represented on home video than a hundred other Japanese directors) where Toyoda says, in response to Richie's claim that male Japanese actors are "so bad" while women are good, that Japanese women are taught to act from childhood (what a claim, in the commentary of a film with Nakadai no less). He then goes on to say that since they are taught to act from childhood, they take naturally to film acting, so that the women on screen are actors, pretending to be in character, and then pretending to act naturally. As complex as this is, and even if it's true in the way it's intended, it almost seems to remove Naruse's hand from this ambiguity and place it in a cultural context. I hope that's not what's intended, as it couldn't be more true. Whatever I've seen of more mediocre home dramas of the period (Hibari anyone?), they have no problem baring all emotion to squeeze every last drop of ambiguity from the world around them in order to harangue sympathy. Though I would say some of the best in Japanese film (or world film) can relate this ambiguity, or, as some would call it contemplation, but that doesn't quite work in these fast paced, literary, studio films. If Naruse is a contemplative cinema, it's on the feet.

At one point, Richie starts comparing Naruse to Bresson, and I admit to a little bit of an eye roll. It seems like everyone gets compared to Bresson if it's not a loud genre film, and it tries to be economical in what is shown. I can think of a thousand ways that Naruse is *not* Bresson, but there is a moment, when she sleeps with Fujisaki and the whiskey glass rolls away from the bed, which, as fully loaded with symbolism as it is, wouldn't be far at all from something you'd see in a Bresson film. It reminded me of my favorite moment in The Devil, Probably (I went on about it in the film's thread here, so excuse me for repeating myself) where Tina Irissari has just made love in an edit, but you only know because she's putting on her shoe, which you never saw removed, while her lover, presumably, is still reading the newspaper he had when the scene started. Again, a thousand reasons can be found for their lack of similarity, but this comparison welled up within myself as well, during that specific scene.

I've always felt closer to Naruse's widescreen films (though I've loved films from all of his eras), and I think I finally figured out why. As much as Ozu is a vertical director (vertical lines seem to own his films, and depth is drawn on a usually distinct axis), Naruse is more horizontal. It's suggested as much with all the cloud related titles, but I tend to see his characters as clouds themselves (not that this was unique, a number of Japanese directors used "clouds" in titles, including Gosho) drifting from left to right, back and forth, etc. I seem to remember them moving at a quietly glacial pace, yet unstoppably and serenely so. The tracking shots of couples walking down a road together is almost a poetic stylization of anthropomorphic clouds, isn't it? An odd thing to consider, but that's how I feel he uses his space and blocking in the horizontal widescreen.

A sister film to When A Woman..., even more than Ginza Cosmetics, is Horoki. While it also stars Takamine Hideko, this time as the oft Naruse adapted Hayashi Fumiko, it spends much of it's time in bars, with Takamine as hostess. She finds love, loses it, finds more twists and turns, same as Mama in When A Woman... I was glad to see that Naruse and Takamine found it to be their favorite of his films (in the last essay of the booklet), as I would also call it my own. I really hope that some company issues this down the line, but I'm glad to have a copy of the Japanese disc (I have the subtitles memorized from a washed out television dub.)

[Michael Kerpan]

A box set of "Lightning", "Horoki" (Wanderer's Notebook) and "Floating Clouds", "Late Chrysanthemums" and "Wife" -- all the Fumiko Hayashi-based films (except for Repast) would be a nice set for Criterion or MOC to release. It could highlight the work of Hayashi as well as that of Naruse.

While I do love Naruse's widescreen films -- I find his style is just as compatible with Academy format (although not often as sumptuous in these). Naruse's square-ish black and white "Song Lantern" is vastly more stunning visually than Kinugasa's 'scope-format color re-make. ;~}

[kinjitsu]

Keith Uhlich at Slant

[godardslave]

Keith Uhlich at Slant

only 3 out of 5 stars for the extras? harsh.
good overview though.

[souvenir]

I ran across this article about a guy who's kind of a liaison for Criterion when they're working on a Japanese title. The pertinent part for this thread:

Only one person has turned him down – the enigmatic Hideko Takamine, now 82, who starred in many of the films of Naruse in the 1950s. These include When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, which was screened last year at Cinematheque Ontario and will soon be available on DVD. "She doesn't go out now," Gross explains.

There's also a quick mention of Teshigahara and the article overall is kind of interesting.

[Steven H]

Marty Gross is a very interesting guy. He's also responsible for the collection of Donald Richie short films recently made available. Here's his website.

[Michael Kerpan]

Of the three Naruse films that were once available on video in the US, only one is available on DVD (Woman Ascending -- obviously) -- so far.

And until the Eclipse Ozu box comes out , far less Ozu films have been released on DVD in the US than were released on video.

[Michael Kerpan]

Dave Kehr on the film and the Criterion DVD (the blurb on his website links to his full NYT review).

[HerrSchreck]

Of the three Naruse films that were once available on video in the US, only one is available on DVD (Woman Ascending -- obviously) -- so far.

And until the Eclipse Ozu box comes out , far less Ozu films have been released on DVD in the US than were released on video.

Naruse & Ozu are hardly barometers with which to sniff the big picture weather of the home video industry. Sure I have specialty releases on vhs too that never came out on dvd yet and may never will.

[Michael Kerpan]

It's not just Japanese antiquities -- there's lots of early Hollywood stuff that was available on video that is not yet available on DVD. The fact that places like Blockbuster didn't have these videos on its shelves does not mean they didn't exist. ;~}

[kinjitsu]

DVD Savant review, and Bosley Crowther's 1963 NY Times review of the film, to be found below his review of 8½.

[Anthony]

I watched this last night and was struck with how nice the print looked. However, I've never paid much attention to the main menu before until now. The main menu looked like something a Criterion intern put together. It looked down right ugly and very unprofessional. Has anyone else noticed this? Maybe the head graphic designer was on vacation. I dunno.

[James]

I watched this last night and was struck with how nice the print looked. However, I've never paid much attention to the main menu before until now. The main menu looked like something a Criterion intern put together. It looked down right ugly and very unprofessional. Has anyone else noticed this? Maybe the head graphic designer was on vacation. I dunno.

I thought the main menu was awesome.

[fiddlesticks]

Hostessing Making a Comeback in Japan (NYT 7/28/09, page B1--registration may be required)

[aox]

Is this generally considered Naruse's best film or his masterpiece? Is there a reason, other than logistical rights issues, that Criterion selected this film out of his huge filmography?

[domino harvey]

I suspect Naruse is such a relatively "new" property on the art house appreciation circuit, due to the prior unavailability and lack of flash with English language viewers in the first run, that he doesn't have an easily identifiable popular work in the way that Kurosawa or even Mizoguchi does

[Michael Kerpan]

My sense is that Woman Ascending was the best known Naruse film in the US, because it had the best VHS version (my treasured copy got eaten by a wayward VHS player -- all too long before this showed up on DVD). Naruse made so many great films that trying to single out one as "the best" would be a pointless exercise.

[manicsounds]

"Floating Clouds" is his most successful and famous film in Japan, but I don't think of it as his best. Great film, but "Sound Of The Mountain" is my favorite.

"Woman Ascends" is not his best, but still has the Naruse-isms like the central female character, internal conflict, physical breakdown, the essentials in his work. I'd say it is a good start to get into his films.

[Jun-Dai]

My guess is they picked it because it has the best title. Who wouldn't want to buy/watch a film with this title?

I think my favorite is Repast, aka Meshi (so far—I've only seen 3 or 4).

[Michael Kerpan]

I think my favorite is Repast, aka Meshi (so far—I've only seen 3 or 4).

I've seen 68 (or so) -- and Repast remains my favorite (it was the 5th I saw). ;~}

[aox]

I really enjoyed this film despite some very slow bits that fortunately didn't last that long. The performances that Naruse got out of these actors was really the spotlight of the film for me. After watching so much Ozu, it was nice to see the actors 'float like clouds' and 'breathe'. Additionally, since I am referencing this thread, I didn't see anything Ozu-esque in this film except the end when she meets the man and his family on train. The way the scene is muted and portrayed reminded me very much of Ozu. Though, I am not sure these comparisons are even warranted, since perhaps the only characteristic they share is that both Naruse and Ozu are Japanese and happened to work at the same time; but so did hundreds of other directors in Japan. With all humility, it may simply show my limited knowledge of Japanese film history.

Still, I really like the fluidity that Naruse displays with the camera in addition to the controlling or coordinated flexibility he allows his actors (without the hyperbolic animation of Kurosawa), and I look forward to seeing more of his work.