Today in 1927, the release of “The Jazz Singer.”
It was the first “talkie,” a movie where you could hear the actors talk or sing in sync with the images on the screen.
Film buffs point to this as the turning point when the silent movie era began to wind down, though “silent movies” were rarely shown in total silence.
In Japan, for example, many theaters employed people to talk alongside silent movies to add to the entertainment, and they became a huge part of the country’s movie culture.
The term for these performers is benshi, derived from a Japanese phrase meaning “movie talker.”
They were part narrator and part host: often a benshi would introduce a movie, explain what the audience was about to see, and then help tell the silent film’s story while it played, by voicing the actors’ lines and/or doing commentary.
A number of Japanese performing arts traditions have narrative roles like this, so it was a familiar technique to audiences.
And, because a lot of the early movies were coming from America, the benshi served as something of an interpreter, explaining the reasons why characters acted and reacted the way they did.
Benshi were wildly popular; there were thousands of them in the heyday of silent films.
Some people would buy tickets less to see the movie than to see and hear the benshi!
As you might expect, the tradition declined as films began to talk for themselves, though benshi didn’t completely disappear.
Some turned into voice actors or worked in other parts of the movie business.
After World War II, benshi served as real-time interpreters of Western movies.
Today there are still a few benshi out there, performing in the classic style along early films.
And there are a few sound recordings of benshi from the old days; you can sometimes find shows or videos that sync up with the films they accompanied, to hear a bit of what it was like to go to a movie in the era of the benshi.
This month at Peddlers Village in Pennsylvania, it’s Scarecrows in the Village.
There are more than 150 scarecrows in the area, each one with a unique look.
I”m Brady – from the looks of the map, they’ve put the extra scary ones far from the super kid-friendly ones. Thanks etc
Think Again, Al Jolson: Japan’s Silent Movie Culture Is Still Going Strong (Peter Tasker)
Scarecrows in the Village (Peddlers Village)
