OUT ON VIDEO

An occasional update of video releases

* AN ACTOR'S REVENGE - In the 300th movie of his hard-working career, Japanese star Kazuo Hasegawa plays two characters who couldn't be more different: One is a soft-spoken Kabuki actor who plays female roles onstage while planning harsh reprisals against his family's enemies; the other is a swaggering thief who takes an interest in the would-be avenger. Directed by Kon Ichikawa, this 1963 tragicomedy swings between stylized theatricality and bursts of purely cinematic expression. It's not a particularly warm movie, but it's full of surprises and packs a visual wallop even on the small screen. (New Yorker Video, New York) * IL GRIDO - Rarely seen by American audiences since its 1957 release, this brilliant melodrama was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni shortly before such classics as ``L'Avventura'' and ``L'Eclisse'' consolidated his reputation as one of Italy's greatest film artists. Steve Cochran plays an alienated young man who wanders through the Po Valley region in a natty sport jacket, looking for meaningful human relationships but never escaping the waves of existential angst that hang over him like a glowering storm cloud. What could have been an exercise in gratuitous gloom is more than redeemed by Antonioni's eloquent use of natural and architectural settings to convey a rich subtext of empathy and compassion. ``Outcry'' is the English-language title. (Kino Video, New York) * WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Jean Rhys's compelling novel is a sort of prequel to ``Jane Eyre,'' relating the events that transformed Rochester's first wife from an energetic heiress in 19th-century Jamaica to a pathetic madwoman pining away in an English attic. John Duigan's movie adaptation is gorgeously filmed, but cares more about steamy sexual encounters than credible character development. There's not much to recommend beyond its vividly filmed semitropical settings. (New Line Home Video, New York)

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