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NOTE : The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc. ADDITION: Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray January 2018: The Criterion is from a "New 4K digital restoration" , and it's a massive improvement over the older DVDs. The 1080P with max'ed out bitrate has far richer, deeper, colors, the image is darker and detail significantly rises. There is depth and may show a sliver less information in the 2.35:1 frame, but the differences are night and day between HD and SD. Grain textures are prevalent. This is, presumably from a new restoration as it is also being released in Region 'B' by BFI, HERE. For the audio Criterion use an authentic linear PCM mono track in the original Japanese language. There are effects but the music is of prime effectiveness for the film experience. Tamekichi Mochizuki ( Ugetsu Monogatori, Sansho the Bailiff) and Masao Yagi - a Japanese pianist devoted to American jazz with over 100 film composure credits - are credited with the, unique, score. It sounds flat and even in the uncompressed transfer. There are optional English subtitles on the Region 'A'-locked Blu-ray disc. Criterion include a rare, 58-minute, 1999 Directors Guild of Japan interview with director Kon Ichikawa, conducted by film critic Yuki Mori (author of The Films of Kon Ichikawa) - which may be the same one on Masters of Cinema's KoKoro DVD. It deals with the beginnings of the director's involvement in cinema. There is also a new, 13-minute, interview with critic, filmmaker, and festival programmer Tony Rayns who examines the themes and visual style of An Actor's Revenge and places the film in the context of Kon Itchikawa's oeuvre, The package contains a liner notes booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Sragow and a 1955 article by Ichikawa on the beginnings of his work in an anamorphic widescreen format. Kon Ichikawa is a true artist and although most in the West know him for Tokyo Olympiad, he left a rich, diverse, tapestry of cinema of which An Actor's Revenge is a key film. It is brilliant filmmaking and the Criterion Blu-ray gets our highest recommendation! *** ADDITION: Animeigo - NTSC - October 08': Short story is that the BFI looks brightness boosted but has more detail than the Animeigo. To me the single-layered Animeigo looks vertically stretched a bit too and shows more isolated damage - but it is really only on a frame-by-frame basis. The NTSC edition shows a shade more information in the frame and is marginally wider although has a slim black border circumventing the frame slightly limiting horizontal resolution. Animeigo are big on offering subtitle options (see our comparison of their DVD of Imamura's Ballad of Narayama) and you get a choice of dialogue, captions or both with a separation of colors (yellow and green) - see sample below. Animeigo also give an option of original or restored audio and the restored did seem to improve over the older BFI transfer. Extras, although mostly static, lean to Animeigo. The BFI is almost double the price of the Animeigo which, despite its flaws, seems to have had some real effort put into the DVD production although dual-layering would have helped the presentation. Still I'll repeat that I wish this was Criterion. *** ON THE BFI : Although not perfect image quality, it s quite strong at times. A little hazy although anamorphic. If I was to grade the image out of 10 I would give it 7.0 . Not bad, but room for improvement. There was strobbing evident in a few scenes (bright kimonos) and even in italicized sub-titles ( which are non removable English by the way ). The Extras aren't worth discussing... a few static screen on Ichikawa's life and a web link to the BFI site. The sound was good with no hiss or crackling but frankly I was expecting more considering the high interest in this release. Still, I guess beggars can't be choosers especially in the artistic DVD sense, so I thank BFI for putting this out, but again wish it was Criterion.