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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. * * Film-Philosophy salon After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to. To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon. * Film-Philosophy journal: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] **