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Beautiful film about a ginza bar girl approaching the age of thirty - an age at which, she claims, a girl of her profession can either "get married or open a bar of her own." It is a film about how her quest for one and then the other ends in disappointment. Most significantly, though, it is a vehicle through which filmmaker Naruse expresses his view that life is a vicious cycle of disappointments at every turn, a fate which no human action to fight it can deter. The film is breathtakingly shot in widescreen black and white, adding to the film's already bittersweet poignancy. It's a wonderful piece of cinema - a quietly rewarding and remarkably unforced masterpiece. "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" is, quite simply, a thing of beauty and brilliance, and it is a great work of art.
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