Donald Richie visited the set of Kon Ichikawa's eccentric masterpiece during the filming of the famous love scene. Today he shares this experience with us, giving insight into Ichikawa and the production history of the film. In An Actor's Revenge, a Kabuki actor knowingly manipulates the gossamer walls between theater, life, and afterlife to wreak a terrible vengeance on three villains responsible for his parents' death. "An actor's revenge is always a surprise," comments one character, and indeed, the film's audacious screen formalism can be compared to a dazzling, multilayered jazz improvisation. Ichikawa juxtaposes painted sets with naturalistic scenes, lets shadows go free of the figures who made them, combines comic-book with Bertolt Brecht to bring the artifice of traditional Kabuki-with its lifts, revolving stages, and disappearing flats-into the film age. Matinee idol Kazuo Hasegawa recreates the dual roles he had played in Kinugasa's 1935 version of the story, that of the onnagata (female impersonator) whose persona is maintained offstage as well as on; and of the burly small-time crook Yamitaro, who enjoys nothing more than spying on the actor in his offstage charades. (JB)