Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge is a film of staggering invention, unbridled creativity, and boundless inspiration. It is no less than the synthesis of two great art forms: the cinema and Japanese kabuki theater. A remake of a 1935 film of the same title, An Actor's Revenge was made to celebrate Kazuo Hasegawa's 300th film role as an actor (he had previously starred in the original as well). In the film, Hasegawa plays two roles. The first is Yukinojō Nakamura, an onnagata (a man trained to play female roles) who swears to gain his revenge against the three men responsible for the death of his parents. His enemies are two merchants - Kawaguchiya and Hiromiya - and a retired magistrate named Sansai. Sansai's daughter, Namiji, is a favored concubine of the shogun. Yukinojō's revenge involves seducing Namiji, thereby ruining Sansai's position and favor in the eyes of the shogun, and a fiendishly clever plot to bankrupt Kawaguchiya and Hiromiya and drive them insane. Hasegawa's second role is as Yamitarō, a dashing, Robin Hood-esque thief who observes the rest of the story and comments on it almost like a detached Greek chorus. The characters of Yukinojō and Yamitarō are derived from different kabuki traditions, allowing Hasegawa to demonstrate the full measure of his acting talents. In fact, the entire film is a meditation on kabuki theatrics, aesthetics, and traditions. Ichikawa combines these with Western cinematic techniques with a rapturous joy: real sets are interspersed with deliberately artificial ones, multitudes of shots are framed to mimic theatrical blocking, and the acting alternates between pure excess and restraint. And yet, for all of its theatrical inspirations, An Actor's Revenge is a work of pure cinema. Bask in its brilliance and be captivated by its genius!
9/10
I expanded on this review over here:
theretroset.com/an-actors-revenge/
No comments:
Post a Comment