An exquisitely directed take on an independent woman’s hard times in the big city. It’s also a surprise near-noir, full of foreboding urbanity, a parade of damaged souls and the sinking feeling that happiness may be impossible for everyone here. Hideko Takamine is a Tokyo barmaid who charms the elite while she’s on the job, but is beginning to feel her age and the need to move beyond this. Behind sad eyes, she figures that she has two options: get married again—she’s a widow who’s not yet over her husband’s death—or start her own bar. Marriage is out of the question for her, or at least it’s something to be saved for desperate times. So, she decides to start her own bar, but that’s harder for a woman in 1960 Japan than giving yourself heart surgery. The path is brutal and lined with towering debt and there’s at least one literal corpse along the way. Director Mikio Naruse, a thirty-year veteran in films, shoots all of this darkness with a fine eye. Tokyo bustles in the backgrounds and edges of the widescreen frame. It’s a real panorama of life and activity. By contrast, the stairs that Takamine ascends to her job are narrow and claustrophobic, surrounded by high walls. Naruse’s camera only watches her walk up them. It doesn’t follow. It can’t. It’s a loner’s path.