Without wanting to suggest he's a modern-day benshi, doesn't William
Rothman in the I of the Camera (??!) mention that as he shows his
films to class, he provides an on-going commentary - I guess that's
similar in a way ...
H
> Wouldn't it depend on how you approached the material with the
> students? The absence of a benshi would probably produce some very
> interesting ambiguities. As an exercise in examining how moving
> images communicate meaning I think The Water Magician would be a
> fine choice (benshi-less--sorry couldn't resist that one) and the
> question of misrepresentation would be an interesting part of the
> discussion in class.
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Film-Philosophy Salon on behalf of Frank, Michael
> Sent: Fri 15/02/2008 9:28 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: pedagogical query: silent cinema
>
>
>
> ravi's note, reproduced below, raises a fascinating question . . .
> if my purpose in this silent cinema course is to examine how moving
> images can work to communicate meaning in the absence of spoken
> dialogue, and if my circumstances [shared, i venture, by most of us]
> do not permit me to provide a benshi, how honest a representation
> of a film like this one can i offer? . . . if in some sense the film
> was made presupposing a benshi, is showing it without one a
> significant misrepresentation? . .
>
>
>
> of course i understand that the circumstances of viewing in our
> modern institutions are never the same -- probably cannot be the
> same -- as they were originally . . . still i suspect that some
> changes are more radical than others . . . perhaps, just by way of
> illustration/suggestion, we might say that watching "maltese falcon"
> on a TV screen rather than projected in a theatrical space
> misrepresents that film less than would watching it in a theater but
> with the sound track turned off . . .
>
>
>
> put differently, unless we buy into the romantic essentialism of the
> new critics - that every work [of "art"] is an organic whole and
> that any change at all is deadly -- we're likely to want to say that
> some changes do more to harm and/or misrepresent some original
> version more than others
>
>
>
> in more practical terms, would i be doing my students a disservice
> by showing mizoguchi's film without a benshi?
>
>
>
> thoughts???
>
>
>
> mike
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Mike,
>
> You might like to include -- Kenji Mizoguchi's 'The Water Magician'
>
>
>
>
>
> In July 2007 the Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema, New Delhi
> showed this
>
> rare film accompanied by an extraordinary benshi performance (by a
> woman benshi
>
> from Japan). The presence of the benshi totally transformed the
> experience of
>
> this masterpiece of a silent film - that's how the audience must
> have seen the
>
> film when it was made, not as it happens with silent film screenings
> these
>
> days, in a kind of deathly silence.
>
>
>
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