When A Woman Ascends The Stairs

Mikio Naruse - 1960
I love Naruse's repeated motif of the woman approaching the stairs. Low angle look up ,pause, track along with her feet, at the top. There are some great bits of editing as we move further into the bars. The edit here, especially at the start, can be a little surprising. Graphically discontinuous cuts, making us have to reprocess the image, of couples talking in the bar, as well as some pretty much graphically continous jumps across time and space, give this feel. Altogehter, this is surely a more 'modern' picture than 'Late Chrysanthemums' or 'Floating Clouds', as much for the locale as anything.
Neverthless, it shares much with these other two works. The matter of fact attitude towards sex and the body (the bathing in 'Late Chrysanthemums' is a good example, and the rape reference in that film as well). The obsession with money, money, money, it is a driving force behind nearly all the action. The repetitious music. The long, twisting narratives. The nearly entirely awful men, or rather cruel, often not intentionally. The woman trying to escape, becomg cruel in this process, ultimately failing. It is all pretty grim stuff, for all the quiet beauty Naruse also shows.