The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, October 13-20
An Actor’s Revenge (1963)
Directed by Kon Ichikawa
Ichikawa was a master at composing within wide frames, a talent he used to great effect whether he was staging a family melodrama, a tale of religious obsession, or a story of a man at sea. In An Actor’s Revenge—one of three newly restored Ichikawa films screening at the Japan Society, along with Conflagration and Her Brother—he offered an amazingly stylized drama across large, playful planes influenced by theater. His remake of Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1935 same-named film stars the original’s lead actor, Kazuo Hasegawa, as a 19th-century onnagata, or a female-impersonating male actor native to kabuki theater. The middle-aged Yukinojo has grown up in a traveling troupe with dreams of avenging himself against the men who caused his parents’ death by driving his family into financial ruin. He discovers an opportunity when the three aging villains attend a performance one night, leading him to romance one of their daughters and hound the patriarchs without shedding costume. Brilliant colors and dynamic jazz music interact within epic set pieces that unfold against rolling abstract backdrops. The film depicts, within a world of boundless creativity, a quest for revenge that offers only limiting returns. Aaron Cutler (October 17, 7pm at Japan Society’s program of Ichikawa restorations)
