When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki)

Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) combines high melodrama with modernist film language, telling the story of Keiko, a bar hostess struggling to succeed in Tokyo's Ginza district.

Catherine Russell's study of the film provides an in-depth analysis of Naruse's distinctive filmmaking, from his use of two-shots in confined spaces, unique lighting techniques, and his "invisible" and "rhythmic" editing style. She analyses the recurring motif of a woman’s white-stockinged feet climbing stairs, considering how this symbolizes the social dynamics of the high-class Japanese sex industry that sustains hostess bar culture.

Russell goes on to argue that the film is a “late” woman’s film which engages with the institutional barriers to a woman’s success in postwar Japan. She situates the film within the trajectory of Naruse's career and analyses how his social critique is balanced with an aestheticization of a harsh and brutally gendered world, creating an affective tension that is symptomatic of Naruse's own position as an industrial worker.