An Actor's Revenge

AN ACTOR'S REVENGE (1963) - January 5, 2010
I’ll admit that I had never even heard of this movie prior to flipping through the list, nor had I heard of its director, who was apparently quite prolific in Japan. 1001 Movies  calls this “one of the most outrageously entertaining Japanese films ever produced,” which I can’t really say I agree with. On a technical level I admired it quite a lot — the direction, cinematography and score were all quite striking and certainly memorable. The whole look of the film is extremely stylized, and so on a visual level alone it remained entertaining for a while. However the narrative was exceptionally muddled, and there were parts where I had a hard time figuring out what was going on (though it probably didn’t help that as the film went on my attention was really starting to wane).  What else to say about this film? It’s a movie about revenge, which makes you think it’s going to be much more compelling than it is — however, Ichikawa piles on superfluous side-characters and odd asides which really add very little to the film itself. The review in the book states that “the conventions of kabuki theater are affectionately parodied,” so… maybe I needed to know more about kabuki theater to really appreciate this film? I always knew that my lack of kabuki knowledge would come back to haunt me one day.  All in all I’m not sure if I agree that this is one of the essential films of all time, but the visuals were so impressive I’m almost ready to give it a pass just for that.  *1/2