A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Sunday, October 11, 2026

An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)

Kazuo Hasegawa in An Actor's Revenge

Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Fujiko Yanamoto, Ayako Wakao, Raizo Ichikawa, Shintaro Katsu, Eiji Funakoshi, Chusha Ichikawa, Narutoshi Hayashi, Nakamura Ganjior II, Saburo Date, Eijiro Yanaki, Jun Hamamura. Screenplay: Notto Wada, Daisuke Ito, Teinosuke Kinugasa, based on a novel by Otokichi Mikami. Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi. Production design: Yoshinobu Nishioka. Film editing: Shigeo Nishida. Music: Yasushi Akutagawa, Masao Yagi. 

Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge was made in part to celebrate a milestone in the career of actor Kazuo Hasegawa: his 300th film performance. It does so by providing him two roles: the actor Yukinojo Nakamura and the thief Yamitaro. The actor is an onnagata, a male who plays female roles and retains the dress and manner of a woman offstage. The thief provides a running commentary, as he observes the action, which centers on Yukinojo's manipulation of the lovely Namiji (Ayako Wakao), the daughter of one of the men who caused the death of his parents 20 years earlier. He uses his acting skills to lure the men into a trap, trusting that their perception of his effeminate manner will make them unaware of his cunning and his prowess with a sword. Hasegawa's remarkable double performance gives the film its great distinction, but it's also beautifully filmed and staged, with a score that uses a variety of modes, including a surprising switch to jazz in one scene.  


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