WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS (1960)

Keiko (played by Hideko Takamine) is lovingly referred to as Mama to everybody in her little world.  She's the hostess of one of the 700+ bars in the Ginza district of Tokyo that cater to well-to-do businessmen. It's not a whorehouse, but more like a laid back nightclub where men can come and relax and hang out with sexy chicks and, who knows, you might get lucky. At 30-years-old Mama is older than most of the girls, but because she's a widow and has never slept with a customer she has developed a kind of reverence among the customers and the other girls.

When we meet Mama she's at a crossroads in her life. Should she try to marry one of the rich customers or should she try to gather up enough money to open her own bar? That's the two main choices she has, but as we all know, life has a way of throwing you all kinds of unexpected twists.

To most people that probably sounds boring, but thanks to Naruse's masterful direction, the amazing screenplay by Ryuzo (THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, YOJIMBO, SANJURO) Kikushima and such wonderful acting by everybody, including Tatsuya Nakadai as the bar manager who secretly in love with Mama, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.  Lovely music, good pace, beautiful photography...I cannot say enough wonderful things about this movie.  Highly recommended.  It gets even better with repeat viewings.

STRAY DOG (1949)

Inspired by a true event, Jules Dassin's THE NAKED CITY and the writings of Georges Simenon (and maybe even De Sica's BICYCLE THIEVES), STRAY DOG is the story of a rookie homicide detective (Toshiro Mifune) who's gun is pickpocketed one hot summer day on a crowded bus.  He almost immediately realizes what happen and chases the criminal, but the man gets away.  Mifune becomes obsessed with getting his gun back and then riddled with guilt when the gun is used in random crimes.  Mifune's boss teams him up with veteran detective Takashi Shimura to locate the gun and stop the rabid dog that is using it in a one-man crime spree.

STRAY DOG is an interesting film.  It's pretty cool seeing Kurosawa's take on the police procedural film noir genre (my favorite is still T-MEN), but STRAY DOG is simply too long (the black market montage and the interview scenes towards the end should have been trimmed down) and the script is clumsy at times.  Most notably...the borrowed gun moment was totally unneeded.  That said, it's still a good film that's definitely worth a viewing.  Good acting, fair script, nice cinematography, runtime that's probably around 20 minutes too long, a young Isao Kimura.  Also, this is the first of nine writing collaborations between Akira Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima.  Eleven, if you count TORA! TORA! TORA! and RUNAWAY TRAIN.