Japan’s Mikio Naruse Explores Pleasure, Anguish in ‘Woman’

In Mikio Naruse’s “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs,” playing Saturday and Sunday on the Naruse series at the Laemmle Monica 4-Plex, one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers takes us into a twilight world of public pleasure and private anguish: the world of the bar girls of Tokyo’s Ginza District, a sin-city playground bathed in neon, liquor, pain, saxophone smoke and torch ballads.

We watch, with a sympathy that precludes moral condemnation, how they live, how they work or love--sometimes the same thing--and even, occasionally, how they die. Our focal point, a fish-out-of-water bar hostess named Keiko, is played by Japan’s most popular movie actress of the ‘50s, Hideko Takamine.

“Woman” doesn’t quite rank with Naruse’s greatest films--”Mother,” “Flowing” or “Floating Clouds”--and the problem may be technological. Naruse, who had one of the subtlest dramatic-pictorial styles in all Japanese film, sometimes seems uncomfortable with Cinemascope. But the superb cast conquers all. Takamine’s performance is imbued with a mysterious blend of openness and discretion, like a cat tip-toeing over silk. Equally strong are the deceptively vulnerable Masayuki Mori (“Rashomon,” “Ugetsu”) as her main banker-customer, and young Tatsuya Nakadai (later Kurosawa’s Lear in “Ran”), who, as Keiko’s infatuated manager, displays the eerie good looks and cocky sensitivity of a Japanese Paul Newman. Call (310) 394-9741.