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Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki (1960)
Ironical look at roles of women in Japanese society
The stairs Keiko ascends to get to her job as bar hostess descend, too. The film, probably particular to Japanese society of the time, shows how women must descend and stoop to men to have a secure station in life. It's almost like the problem of Lily in Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth." Women such as Lily, who are not low born but have no money of their own or a job or business to tend to, are forced to depend on men. And it's a retelling in its way of Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria," released three years earlier (in 1957). The ending of this movie echoes that of Fellini's film. But proof of the correspondence occurs earlier: when Keiko is talking at night on the street in the Ginza with the man, a customer, she wants, on an illuminated sign in the background is the name "Cabiria."