An Actor's Revenge Reviews

A visual stunner and a flat-out masterpiece, Kon Ichikawa's 1963 film is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest films to come out of Japan. A remake of a 1935 film by Teinosuke Kinugasa, An Actor's Revenge tells the story of a Kabuki actor who, years after his father's death, finds the culprits and seeks his revenge. With an actor as its protagonist, an unapologetically stagebound story, and a deliberately affected visual scheme, the movie's preoccupation with performance and theater -- and how the latter's vocabulary can be used to expand film language -- is evident. Asides, soliloquies, and expository dialogue abound; the convoluted melodrama, underscored by gender-bending, crudely comical minor characters and identity switches, recalls Shakespeare. Visually, the movie's debt to theater is even more apparent. Renowned as a visual stylist and perfectionist, Ichikawa sets out to divorce film from its obligation to verisimilitude, conceiving the widescreen frame as a proscenium arch and arranging most of his compositions against a backdrop of darkness. The expressionistic use of light, shadow, and color is constantly inventive and masterful: characters emerge from complete darkness lit by lone spotlights; pronounced lighting shifts signal emotional fluctuations; and swordfights are seen only as dances of swirling, reflected light. Pushing the limits of film language, Ichikawa reimagines mise-en-scène as a conduit for pure expression rather than a means to represent reality. Brandishing Ichikawa's trademark irony, the movie never seeps under the skin -- it always stands at a distance. Still, An Actor's Revenge is never less than aesthetically brilliant, a beautiful and aloof object of contemplation.