It was so wonderful to see that this year I can watch the remake of a great movie from last year! I was so curious to see what Ichikawa would do differently than the already wonderful Kinugasa.
Yukinojo Henge (An Actor’s Revenge)
Japan 1963, Ichikawa Kon, 114′
For the synopsis you can really just read last year’s post, the script is nearly identical!
It’s madness to think, an actor could play the same role in a remake 28 years later. Well it’s Japan, so Kazuo Hasegawa did just that as his 300th movie and reprised his role as Yukinojo. You do see he’s older now and actually at times he does look a little too old for the role of a young man in his twenties at most. However both his feminine side and his vengeful side are still there in full bloom and I can not imagine someone else for Yukinojo. To be fair however, if judged on the performance of Hasegawa alone, I do slightly prefer the original as no matter how excellent of an actor he is, you can not unsee his age.
The remake stays faithful to the original story, no really meaningful changes are made, however the cinematography is much different: exterior scenes are deliberately shown as shot on a stage: the ground is not real dirt, the trees and houses and walls are almost symbolic, the background is solid black. It evokes a feeling of watching a theatre play. Also, most fights are stylised, no classic swordplay here. Blending and split shots galore! In general Ichikawa surprisingly went for the more artsy choices, which does work quite well with the script, as the revenge trip together with the constructed manner of the shots blend well into a Tarantinoesque artificialness.
It’s hard to say which movie is better, especially as we only have a heavily cut, almost disjointed 97-minute version of the original 5-hour 3-parter available. Without a doubt, the Hasegawa of the original is the better choice and in it’s current state the original loses to the remake which has no pacing issues for example. Ideally, the 1935 Hasegawa should have met the 1963 Ichikawa. Scratch that, someone just needs to invent a time machine and rescue the original movie in all its glory.
Darn, all these Ichikawa films sound so good! I looked up some screenshots of “Yukinojo Henge” and they look absolutely awesome. I am so impressed.
Sometimes old copies of movies magically re-appear somewhere, so there is always hope to find the original 5-hour-version… maybe.