Introduced by Sheldon Renan, founding director ofthe Pacific Film Archive In 1971, the year PFA opened in thenew museum building, Sheldon Renan secured the first significant acquisition ofJapanese films for the PFA Collection, which now holds the largest singlecollection of Japanese cinema outside of Japan. Renan began the Archive with aneye toward the Pacific Rim (hence the name, Pacific Film Archive), and the wealthof cinema from that region, Japan in particular, has been a strong focus of thePFA program for twenty-five years. Renan will share his recollections of Mr.Nagasama and Madame Kashiko Kawakita and the importance to PFA of theircommitment to cultural exchange through the art of cinema. (Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki). Hideko Takamine portrays the consummateNaruse heroine: high minded, determined, and out of her element in a sordidworld. Here it is the back-street bars of Tokyo's Ginza district which Naruserecreates in all its busy detail and poetry. Keiko is a Mama-san or bar hostess,a modern, lower-scale incarnation of the geisha. A widow at thirty, and exploitedby her selfish family, she realizes that she must either remarry or strike out onher own in the face of furious competition from other Mama-sans. A devastatingcourtship with a longtime customer only reveals the true vulnerability of Keiko'sposition. Naruse's approach, like his protagonist, is never indelicate yet alwaysunsentimental and direct. In an extraordinary opening few minutes, he lays outall the themes and problems of the film in the quick telling brush strokes of amaster. Make no mistake: lives are in the balance.