Cine Outsider header
Left bar Home button Disc reviews button Film review button Articles button Blogs button Interviews button Right bar
news archive
Older news stories have been archived by year and month, most recent first. They can be accessed by clicking on the links below.
2024 2023 2022
2021 2020 2019
2018 2017 2016
2015 2014 2013
2012 2011 2010
2009 2008 2007
2006 2005 2004
 
Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge on dual format in March

15 February 2018

Strange, sumptuous and visually stunning, An Actor’s Revenge [Yukinojô henge] is a wildly melodramatic tale of a kabuki female impersonator who exacts a long-delayed revenge on the men who drove his parents to suicide. It is played out against a colourful backdrop of comic rivalries between thieves in the Tokyo underworld.

Kazuo Hasegawa stars in the dual role of both the actor and a thief, in a film which celebrated his 300th screen appearance. A heady cocktail of swooning romanticism and highly stylised action, with an outstanding soundtrack that ranges from traditional Japanese music to lush Hollywood strings and cocktail jazz, An Actor’s Revenge is a cinematic tour de force.

An Actor's Revenge dual format pack shot

On 26 March the BFI will bring Kon Ichikawa’s 1963 An Actor's Revenge to Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, releasing it in a Dual Format Edition (also contains a DVD version) at the RRP of £19.99.

Special features:

  • New audio commentary by critic, programmer and Japanese film expert Tony Rayns
  • 100 Years of Japanese Film (Nagisa Oshima, 1995, 52 mins): the award-winning director of In the Realm of the Senses (1976) explores the first century of Japanese cinema
  • Oriental SplendourJapan Pays HomageJapan. To Rid Their Souls of Evil, and In Old Japan (1927-1930, 4 mins): four rare archive films documenting Japanese life, from the Topical Budget newsreel
  • Fully illustrated booklet with new writing by James Bell, Espen Bale, Virginie Sélavy and Vic Pratt, plus original review by David Wilson and full film credits