You know how Hausu sounds a lot like every single “Dumb kids go into haunted house, die?” movie ever made, but then Nobuhiko Obayashi took that basic framework and built a hallucinogenic freakout where severed heads bite buttocks and pianos eat girls while the girls play the piano but also they seem kinda into the whole ‘being eaten’ thing and by the end you can’t help but think that even though you’ve seen a million movies where dumb kids go into a haunted house and suffer terrible mortal injuries, you’ve never seen anything at all like Hausu?
You know how Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is, well, Dracula, and you’ve seen Dracula riffed on backwards and forwards and run through every conceivable variation until there’s no possible way there’s any blood left to be wrung out of that particular stone, but then Francis Ford Coppola just unloads an entire legion of cannons worth of cinematic technique so that every single shot in his Dracula is an eye-popping wonder so that by the end of the film there can be no question that, love it or hate it, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is an absolute singular entity?
An Actor’s Revenge is playing a similar game.
Now available to own thanks to Criterion, An Actor’s Revenge comes with an essay by Michael Sragow which explains that the film was actually devised as a form of punishment for its director, the acclaimed Kon Ichikawa.
“Studio executives at Daiei intended to punish the director for his costly techniques on Conflagration (1958), Bonchi (1960), and The Outcast (1962) by saddling him with this assignment,” Sragow writes.
A remake of an earlier adaptation of the novel by Otokichi Mikami, An Actor’s Revenge sets up a relatively standard revenge saga, only for Ichikawa to play jump-rope with the genre formula to create something bizarre and spellbinding all his own.
As the film opens, a new kabuki theater troupe has arrived at Edo (former name of Tokyo). The undisputable star of the show is Yukinojō Nakamura (Kazou Hasegawa), an onnagata (male actor who plays female roles) who captivates virtually every patron with his hypnotic talents. In attendance for this debut is the ambitious businessman Kawaguchiya (Saburo Date), powerful associate of the shogun Sansai Dobe (Ganjiro Nakamura), and Dobe’s beautiful daughter (and beloved concubine to the shogun) Lady Namiji (Ayako Wakao). Namiji is instantly enraptured by the androgynous allure of this actor, which leads to both Kawaguchiya and Dobe plotting as to how to use this attraction to their own ends.
What none of the three know is that Yukinojō already knows them. It transpires that many decades and miles ago, these two men (and a third, the powerful merchant Hiromiya [Eijiro Yanagi]) conspired together to destroy the business of a man in Nagasaki. The man’s life was destroyed, and shortly thereafter both he and his wife fell into madness and suicide.
But they left behind a child. Yukinojō has spent his entire life training for the moment when he would track down the men who ruined his world, honing his abilities not only in stagecraft but in martial arts and swordplay. When he rolls into Edo, Yukinojō has a plan in place to impose upon these men the same suffering that they inflicted upon him.
An Actor’s Revenge apparently began life as a serial in the newspaper, and you can see that reflected in just how dense the film quickly becomes with moving pieces. Along with all the players mentioned above, Yukinojō’s plan is also complicated by the presence of a revolving door of local thieves and con artists (including a dashing Robin Hood-esque bandit, also played by Hasegawa) and an unctuous ronin with a grudge against Yukinojō.
This is all so much familiar revenge movie machinations, but Ichikawa plays things with juuuuuust enough of a wink to acknowledge that he is aware of how hoary these tropes are. But it’s in the visuals that An Actor’s Revenge really sings, as Ichikawa crafts frame after frame of heart-stopping beauty, pivoting from kaleidoscopic rainbows to shadows so deep you feel as though you are sinking into the frame. Ichikawa at times uses the proscenium of the stage against the edge of the frame, resulting in landscapes that seem to stretch on forever. A former animator, Ichikawa never stops finding new ways to illustrate (see what I did there?) his action, with even static images taking on beguiling or terrifying power (I’m thinking specifically of two sequences in which much of Yukinojō’s body is covered in shadow, leaving only his voice and illuminated eyes to bedevil and horrify his enemies).
All of this is grounded in the notion that what we are seeing is an actor’s revenge, and Yukinojō would not be satisfied with something so petty as a quick bit of swordplay. It has to be elaborate. As portrayed by Hasegawa, Yukinojō never breaks from his stage persona, continuing to dress and present as feminine even when he is out of character and off-stage. At times when the actor performs, Ichikawa depicts the show from Yukinojō’s perspective, the snowfall not paper but actual flakes, the windswept plains not a set but a locale that stretches on for miles. Everything is a show for Yukinojō, and everything he says and does is part of his role within that ordained story. It’s off-putting from the start, and only grows moreso as the story unravels and there ensue major, unforeseen consequences to the actor’s course of action.
Hasegawa actually originated this same dual role when An Actor’s Revenge was produced thirty years prior to this version. Ichikawa’s riff on the story is credited as Hasegawa’s 300th feature role, yet there’s nothing in either performance to suggest that Hasegawa is going through the motions or slowing down. The duplicity of the actor and the thief is an impressive technical trick (which this 50+-year-old film pulls off better than some modern ones I could mention), but even more impressive is the contrast between the two performances. As Yukinojō, Hasegawa is poised and precise, every move and utterance surgical and considered. As the bandit, Yamitarō, Hasegawa is all rangy machismo, broad and relaxed and possessed of casual strength.
But the real star is Ichikawa behind the camera, merrily hurling technique and style at the screen to see what sticks.
Every so often a filmmaker will find themselves needing to do that, whether it’s Scorsese with After Hours or Spielberg with Catch Me If You Can or Brian de Palma with, well, pretty much any movie Brian de Palma has ever made. There’s a need to just cut loose, to dig into a piece of storytelling with both teeth and really flex some muscles.
An Actor’s Revenge plays notes that you will no doubt have heard before, but it follows a rhythm that is entirely its own, and the result is something beautiful and terrible and haunting in equal measure.