Kino

[Brian C]

Have you actually seen the French (or Italian) disc or are you still blowing smoke out of your ass based on a few screen caps? If it's the latter, does your insufferable ego have any bounds?

Well, that sure was unnecessary.

[manicsounds]

New thread necessary: "Silent Movies: Original Language Intertitles Necessary Or Not?"

[TMDaines]

If the French The Leopard never showed up then I'd be very happy with my BFI (/Criterion) still! It's just the level of detail in that version is astonishing in comparison to the earlier Blus.

Have you actually seen the French (or Italian) disc or are you still blowing smoke out of your ass based on a few screen caps? If it's the latter, does your insufferable ego have any bounds?

I think you're needed here to tell everyone to buy the French disc and to stop "blowing smoke out of [their asses] based on a few screen caps".

How dare people use screen caps to judge a disc! Do their insufferable egos have no limit?! These people!

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I have actually lost track of the arguments going on here but if it's any help as an actual owner of both the actual french discs of the Leopard and Samourai let me actually chime in and say that the actual discs of both are respectively actually sublime in the exterior shots but severely suffer from cloggy blacks and loss of detail in shadow in interior shots for the former whilst the actual latter is abysmal and looks like a graphic novel with a complete lack of grain, is contrast boosted to buggery, the highlights are clipping and has edge enhancement up the wazoo. Otherwise its actually not bad.

[MichaelB]

I have no plans to replace my perfectly good BFI Blu-ray of The Leopard, so this is hypothetical - but the impression I'm getting is that while the French disc improves on it in some aspects, others are decidedly worse. Is that fair?

[Michael Kerpan]

> You have avoided the Benshi Japanese point, where within a culture there was a
> freeform interpretation of the drama, which as it where, eclipsed the intertitles...

Not really the case at all in Japan, except very briefly , in the earliest days of Japanese cinema (virtually all films from such era are long-lost). By the mid-20s, benshi narrations were strictly scripted -- and fully censored. Any deviation from the officially approved script was forbidden. Japanese films were, accordingly, developed with awareness of the interplay between titles and narration. Film makers (and studios) who had no problem with benshi narration tended to use less titles. Those who opposed the benshi (e.g. Shochiku and Ozu), used lots and lots of titles.

Our notion of some early Japanese films is very skewed -- the seemingly avant-garde Kinugasa Pages Out of Order (proper translation of the incorrectly English-named Pages of Madness) had a very elaborate benshi script (a fair amount of which still exists) that made the film seem much less mysterious than we perceive it now. (Kinugasa helped create the modern notion of the film when he significantly (and destructively) re-edited the rediscovered print -- and suppressed the actual film that he had originally made). Note: Titles had been prepared for the film originally, but at the last moment these were deemed unnecessary -- perhaps due to superfluity in light of the benshi script).

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I have no plans to replace my perfectly good BFI Blu-ray of The Leopard, so this is hypothetical - but the impression I'm getting is that while the French disc improves on it in some aspects, others are decidedly worse. Is that fair?

Correct al mundo

[TMDaines]

I have no plans to replace my perfectly good BFI Blu-ray of The Leopard, so this is hypothetical - but the impression I'm getting is that while the French disc improves on it in some aspects, others are decidedly worse. Is that fair?

Correct al mundo

Yep, none of the Blurays of The Leopard are without seemingly some fault. Each has approached the aspect ratio problem differently too. I still don't understand why he's still so up in arms about me observing that the French version has a much greater level of detail in the print, when that's so apparent from the screencaps (and, indeed, the rips that are available online).

I've got the BFI too and won't be upgrading to either Blu-ray from the other restoration either - for the reasons mentioned here and elsewhere.

[ellipsis7]

Thanks for the clarification, MK - fascinating!... Is it probably then true that for proper appreciation of Japanese silent cinema, the Benshi scripts should be restored in some form, reuniting them with the visuals and the intertitles, so there would be 3 simultaneous texts again - image, captions, and narration - unfolding at the same time?...

[TMDaines]

> You have avoided the Benshi Japanese point, where within a culture there was a
> freeform interpretation of the drama, which as it where, eclipsed the intertitles...

Not really the case at all in Japan, except very briefly , in the earliest days of Japanese cinema (virtually all films from such era are long-lost). By the mid-20s, benshi narrations were strictly scripted -- and fully censored. Any deviation from the officially approved script was forbidden. Japanese films were, accordingly, developed with awareness of the interplay between titles and narration. Film makers (and studios) who had no problem with benshi narration tended to use less titles. Those who opposed the benshi (e.g. Shochiku and Ozu), used lots and lots of titles.

Is there any examples of this style of silent film in Western cinema i.e. one with a live narration or performance? Now and again I've read or heard passing mentions to silents with live narration but no-one has ever gone into much detail on the subject.

[Gregory]

Thanks for the clarification, MK - fascinating!... Is it probably then true that for proper appreciation of Japanese silent cinema, the Benshi scripts should be restored in some form, reuniting them with the visuals and the intertitles, so there would be 3 simultaneous texts again - image, captions, and narration - unfolding at the same time?

That would probably be overwhelming or even impossible, but those who want to experience benshi have sometimes been able to attend special screenings (many put on by Matsuda Film Productions) that feature soundtracks or live performances of benshi. The most famous benshi active in Japan, Midori Sawato, has even developed some English translations and has performed them in various places, though I haven't had the opportunity to attend one.

Is there any examples of this style of silent film in Western cinema i.e. one with a live narration or performance? Now and again I've read or heard passing mentions to silents with live narration but no-one has ever gone into much detail on the subject.

Live lectures accompanied films widely throughout North America and Europe as well during the first 15-20 years or so of the medium, but it pretty much died out in those regions by about 1920, and scholars don't know much about what these lecturers recited or how they did it (aside from benshi in Japan, of course).

[matrixschmatrix]

Is there any examples of this style of silent film in Western cinema i.e. one with a live narration or performance? Now and again I've read or heard passing mentions to silents with live narration but no-one has ever gone into much detail on the subject.

A friend of mine who lived in Poland up until he was 8 or 9 told me that when they imported movies that didn't have dubbing available, they would just have a guy go on stage and read the script out in Polish over the voices of the actors. He has vivid memories of seeing Top Gun that way.

I have no idea of whether or not that was a widespread practice, though.

[whaleallright]

Our notion of some early Japanese films is very skewed -- the seemingly avant-garde Kinugasa Pages Out of Order (proper translation of the incorrectly English-named Pages of Madness) had a very elaborate benshi script (a fair amount of which still exists) that made the film seem much less mysterious than we perceive it now.

A tangent to a tangent, but: PAGE OF MADNESS is scheduled for broadcast on TCM, on Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 3:00 PM. No idea if this will be from a better print than the film is usually shown in. But might be worth taping just in case.

Since it seemed to get lost in between a few posts of snark and screaming, I just wanted to reiterate my point that intertitles developed as they did because their initial uses were pointedly not to relay dialogue. Dialogue titles emerged only gradually and didn't really come to the fore until the 1920s.

[Michael Kerpan]

The most famous benshi active in Japan, Midori Sawato, has even developed some English translations and has performed them in various places, though I haven't had the opportunity to attend one.

I've been fortunate enough to attend three films narrated by Midori Sawato -- but her narration has always been in (subtitled on the screen) Japanese.

Apparently Bunuel initially did live narration for his Las Hurdes, prior to the release of the the now-standard version with recorded narration. (The supercilious tone of the recorded narrator was reportedly patterned on Bunuel's own delivery).

[MichaelB]

A friend of mine who lived in Poland up until he was 8 or 9 told me that when they imported movies that didn't have dubbing available, they would just have a guy go on stage and read the script out in Polish over the voices of the actors. He has vivid memories of seeing Top Gun that way.

I have no idea of whether or not that was a widespread practice, though.

If you see 'Polski lektor' as a soundtrack option on a Polish DVD (or cinema screening, or TV broadcast), that's what it means - it's still reasonably common practice, though more often in recorded form.

As for live performance, Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain! and My Winnipeg were both staged in live versions, and I saw the late Ken Campbell narrating Benjamin Christensen's Häxan.

[HerrSchreck]

As a matter of fact, the earliest surviving extant american silent film, 1912s Richard III, went out on the road with its main star Frederick Warde, a then legendary stage actor who played the lead role. . who opened and closed the proceedings with his illustriou self. and came on stage at strategic points between reels to setup certain points in the plot.

One can even see in the surviving prints of the film opening and closing shots of Warde completely out of character taking a bow to open and close the film. . . a rather poor substitute for those who didn't get to see the film when he toured with it.

[TMDaines]

A friend of mine who lived in Poland up until he was 8 or 9 told me that when they imported movies that didn't have dubbing available, they would just have a guy go on stage and read the script out in Polish over the voices of the actors. He has vivid memories of seeing Top Gun that way.

I have no idea of whether or not that was a widespread practice, though.

If you see 'Polski lektor' as a soundtrack option on a Polish DVD (or cinema screening, or TV broadcast), that's what it means - it's still reasonably common practice, though more often in recorded form.

This is definitely common to Eastern Europe as it it happens all the time on Ukrainian TV also. A male (and sometimes a female also) will dub the whole film just slightly altering their voice for each character. It's definitely more of a voice over then an impersonation of the acting. I always presumed the practise started when Eastern Europe was opened up to the American market and dubbing over an exisiting print or broadcast was cheaper than creating a proper dub with the background noise present but the original voices eliminated.

You'll probably know more about this than I do, MichaelB, but it seems Poland is one of the countries that really does have a mix of subtitling, dubbing and voice-overs

[John Edmond]

Would 90degree South, Ponting's sound version of The Great White Silence count as capturing the lecture film experience (having only seen The Great White Silence)?

[zedz]

Would 90degree South, Ponting's sound version of The Great White Silence count as capturing the lecture film experience (having only seen The Great White Silence)?

Endurance: The Story ot a Glorious Failure, Frank Hurley's 1933 sound reworking of his 1919 masterpiece South (which was itself a free-standing 'movie' version of Hurley's illustrated lectures on the Endurance expedition), sort of fits the bill as well. It's narrated by the Frank Worsley and features footage from Shackleton's final, fatal expedition, so it's got plenty of documentary value in its own right.

[manicsounds]

A Farewell To Arms BD review

[MichaelB]

Would 90degree South, Ponting's sound version of The Great White Silence count as capturing the lecture film experience (having only seen The Great White Silence)?

Herbert Ponting is an excellent example, because his standalone features were made explicitly as substitutes for the thousands of illustrated lectures that he gave in the 1910s and 20s - they were designed to take over the workload and indeed to outlive him. And yes, one of the main virtues of 90˚ South over its otherwise superior predecessor is the way that it preserves his lecturing style.

I also wonder when looking at films like James Williamson's intertitle-free The Little Match Seller (1902) whether they weren't conceived with narration in mind. I haven't tried actually syncing it up, but the original Hans Christian Andersen story is short enough to be plausibly read aloud within the film's running time, and it would clarify a couple of obscure points that seem to demand familiarity with the story.

[John Edmond]

Nice to hear. I wasn't sure if the reduction in time meant Ponting had substantially rethought 90˚ South - it will be interesting to see/hear what he did (haven't read BFI's liner notes because I haven't finished with the set yet).

And despite having been to multiple Frank Hurley exhibitions (albeit one was of Papua New Guinea) I still have yet to see South let alone Endurance: The Story of a Glorious Failure. More omissions needing correction.

[triodelover]

Beaver on A Farewell to Arms BD.

[knives]

The Jean Rollin films have covers now and they're pretty good. they seem to give a good idea of where the rights are from.

[med]

I normally don't go for cover-art queenery, but I think they're lousy. The typefaces on all of them look like they came from a free font pack. The images themselves are near-PD territory.

That said, I'm very much looking forward to these!