An Actor's Revenge (1963)

Yukinojo, a Kabuki actor, seeks revenge by destroying the three men who caused the deaths of his parents. Also involved are the daughter of one of Yukinojo's targets, two master thieves, and a swordsman who himself is out to kill Yukinojo.

Director:

Kon Ichikawa

Writers:

Otokichi Mikami (newspaper serial), Daisuke Itô (screenplay)

Stars:

Kazuo Hasegawa, Fujiko Yamamoto, Ayako Wakao

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Kazuo Hasegawa	...	Yukinojo Nakamura / Yamitaro the Thief
Fujiko Yamamoto	...	Ohatsu
Ayako Wakao	...	Namiji
Eiji Funakoshi	...	Heima Kadokura
Narutoshi Hayashi	...	Mukuzu
Eijirô Yanagi	...	Hiromi-ya
Chûsha Ichikawa	...	Kikunojo Nakamura
Ganjirô Nakamura	...	Sansai Dobe
Yutaka Nakayama	...	Townsman
Chitose Maki	...	Townswoman
Toshio Chiba	...	Ronin
Kôichi Mizuhara	...	Dobe's Man
Saburô Date	...	Kawaguchi-ya
Shirô Ôtsuji	...	Civil Guardsman
Jun Hamamura	...	Isshosai

Storyline

While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly by seducing the daughter of one of them, secondly by ruining them...

---

Plot Keywords:

kabuki | year 1836 | love | kimono | japan | 

---

Genres:

Drama

---

Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

16 June 1971 (USA)

Also Known As:

An Actor's Revenge

Company Credits

Production Co:

Daiei Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During an exchange about half-way through the film, two characters are discussing the southern city Nagasaki, and they pronounce it 'NaNgasaki', which indicates the convention of speakers from Tokyo/Edo and the north of Japan, despite both characters notionally coming from the south (i.e. Osaka and Nagasaki), where terminal 'g' is not pronounced 'ng'.

---

Connections

Version of Yukinojô henge: Daiippen dainihen (1935)

User Reviews

A film without the crisis of drama, so little post-dramatic and this is not even considered as a problem.

"Actor's Revenge" only fails to extend times that do not collaborate for its construction, generating two underworlds. In the first we have the scenes of action and revenge in a world full of frenzy, in another, we have the oscillations of character, the questionings and a whole insertion of poetic images that take much of the film and give it a contemplative rhythm and consequently dragged, But both underworlds are linked by the precise performance of Yukinojo (Kazuo Hasegawa), who is divided between an actor specializing in women roles of the Kabuki Theater and who wishes to avenge the death of the parents. And as second character, a pickpocket, a thief.

Kon Ichikawa, a famous Japanese director, known for his meticulously perfectionist but commercially fruitless films, was commissioned to readjust the novel Otokichi Mikami, and consequently, along with his wife and frequent collaborator, screenwriter Natto Wada, transformed what would be a Banal melodrama in a delirious, highly stylized and idiosyncratic spectacle.

From the outset, Ichikawa's irreverent and sarcastic mood would set the infectiously playful but stylistically audacious and self-assured tone of the kitsch eccentric fusion of high-end art and pop culture.

"Actor's Revenge" is a stylistically daring and irreverent satire that seeks to reconcile the familiar and traditional elements of native culture with the modern vitality of Western influence in contemporary Japan. Recurring fragmentation of Ichikawa's images reflects the voyeuristic relationship between the spectator and the artist: obscure and prolonged battle scenes, witnessed by rooftops, seamless visual transitions between theatrical dramatization and stylized, "real life" episodes, the framing of Actors through doors or other visual occlusions that seem to underscore the intrusive view of the public. The old-fashioned script for the tragic melodrama (shimpa) popular early in Japanese cinema is infused with irony, social satire, and dual-minded visual subversives.

The eccentric fusion of traditional and modern Japanese art forms is exemplified by an eclectic soundtrack that combines traditional accompaniment of kabuki, folk music, jazz and avant-garde ambient sounds.