Big jewels, bags of silver and gold and a gang of bandits are exactly what the film "El Automovil Gris" delivered over the weekend at Loew Auditorium. Mixing elements of American, Mexican and Japanese cultures, the film was rather difficult to get a grasp on.
So difficult, in fact, that it left many audience members scratching their heads. This inevitably gave way to those audience members going from scratching their heads to moving their feet as they walked out of the auditorium, lost and without much desire to find their way back. Only 20 or so were left by the end of the program.The silent Mexican film tells the story of the "Gray Car Gang," an actual band of thieves that terrorized Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution.
Dressing as police officers, the outlaws would approach a wealthy household and present a forged search warrant.
Once inside, the bandits would torment and rob their victims. They made their get-away in a grey Fiat, and hence the name "Gray Car Gang."
In the film, the roles of the victims are played by the real life victims of 1919.
What was so unique about this adaptation by director Claudio Valdes Kuri is that it attempts to incorporate the Japanese "benshi" tradition -- a live actor is placed alongside the screen to render the voices of the onscreen actors.
In the performance at Dartmouth, three such benshis were used, along with a pianist.
Dressed in traditional Japanese attire complete with makeup whitened faces, the benshis were curiously intriguing.
These three individuals were responsible for creating sounds and voices for over 50 characters in the silent film and managed to do that with distinctions for each character.
Whether the character was depicted as bumbling or flirtatious was completely at the benshi's discretion.
This company has traveled all over the world, carrying to audiences a highly overrated adaptation. The benshis, while possessing a great talent, are rather annoying.
For a solid 10 minutes in the film, all three benshis bark like dogs and meow like cats at the top of their lungs.
The breaks that they created in the film were rather peculiar; completely stopping the film, and then proceeding to dance on the stage for no apparent reason.
Perhaps the film would have been easier to deal with if the benshis had chosen only one language to use. The majority of the renderings were done in Spanish, and, to an English speaking audience, it left much to be desired.
Quite randomly, they switched into English, however these instances were infrequent and very brief. Indeed the film was so dry that several students at the showing, fed up, simply walked out midway through.
Subtitles were on the screen, but not for every line and often times the English was very broken. Suffice to say, this was not the only element lost in the translation.
