An Actor’s Revenge ( Yukinojo Henge, Kon Ichikawa, 1963, Japan)

It doesn’t happen often that a film actually benefits from it’s director not wanting to make it, but this is one of those rare cases. He was not in favor at his studio (daiei) after his last two films had lost money. He was assigned to make this film and could not refuse. The film was made to celebrate actor Kazuo Hasegawa’s 300th film and was a remake of his most popular film where he’d played two roles: As a Kabuki actor always clad as a woman and as a thief who assist the actor to avenge his parents. This is a swashbuckling action-adventure. When Hasegawa originally acted these roles he was 27. Now he was 55.

Instead of toning down this absurdity and improbability of the story Ichikawa exaggerates them and has fun with the theatricality and artificiality of the piece and basically made a live-action cartoon, reflecting his background as a Manga artist. He uses devices like thought bubbles, blatantly fake sets, non-fitting music and so forth. He also makes the sexual ambiguity of the film obvious, especially in a scene where Hasegawa as a man watches himself as a woman having sex with a woman.

Kon Ichikawa is still alive and working. He’s undoubtably a talented film-maker and has made a number of remarkable films. We’ll mention his very humanistic war films like The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain and the outstanding documentary Tokyo Olympiad, which revolutionized the filming of sports. He has however made some films which can’t honestly be recommended.