IT was early afternoon as we entered the library of the Timoteo Paez Elementary School in Pasay. The air-condtioned venue surprised us with the full-bodied tone of the Celso Espejo Rondalla group. Onscreen a film was showing and the sound, which we usually ascribe to rural vignettes, accompanied the actions and the odd movement of the black-and-white film.
But there was another sound: it was the voice of a man speaking now, ranting next, shrill as a woman’s angry face flashed on the small screen, guttural as the gangster bellowed with the might of someone with murderous intent. They were the voices of a man all alone at the table in front of us. He was Kataoka Yoichiro. He was the benshi for the film of the legendary Japanese film director Ozu Yasujiro, titled The Dragnet Girl.
The first time I saw Kataoka was in a brochure distributed by Japan Foundation Manila, the institution behind his visit and the screening of the silent film. Kataoka was dressed in a kimono complete with the hakama, that rigid skirt-like costume we often attribute to samurai. Kataoka was not a samurai but he was as brave as that persona.
Kataoka is one of the few remaining benshi in Japan, the silent film narrator. The benshi would have been a relic of the past had it not been for this very Japanese strong sense of tradition. Silent films are still being shown as if the form coexists with the talkies, a practice that makes us consider the silent film not as a faded memento from somewhere, but as an element that can inform us of different and alternative cinematic persuasions
That afternoon, in that quiet library, Kataoka appeared more like a tea master. He was lost in that small space of dialogues and inflections. At the other side of the library were the young musicians of the rondalla company, the Celso Espejo group, watching the fort as its old, seasoned members were on an international tour.
In the orchestra was its youngest member, all 12 years of age. I wondered if he knew who Ozu was. It did not matter, the benshi assured us. The orchestra providing the sound could always improvise. He told us later in an interview that, on many occasions, he did not have the luxury of rehearsals. In some instances, he met the orchestra for some 15 minutes only before the actual screening.
Onscreen was Ozu’s The Dragnet Girl, a film noir that, save for the faces, could be taken for those detective and gangster films that proliferated in old Hollywood of the 1930s. Kataoka would remind us that Ozu, far from the quintessential Japanese filmmaker that Orientalist love to paint, was influenced heavily in his early years by American film. This fact settles the presence of a rondalla whose music is always linked to Filipiniana. The rondalla, the film and the benshi demonstrate not the meeting of classics but the dialogue of cosmopolitan tastes.
As the action onscreen shifted from quiet to violent, the rondalla also changed its pace. The benshi increased the volume of his voice, guttural at times and strident in others. The buzz of the aircon and the languor of the afternoon could not put down the fever in the room. Something was happening. The music and that voice that had become voices bringing the film to strong life.
The notion of silent film had become temporal. There was voice and there were sounds, and they were not disembodied anymore.
The film had ceased to be a silent one, but one that accommodated words and music.
Why a benshi in this era of nonsilent films?
In Japan and in other parts of the world, the tradition of screening silent films hasn’t died. The presence of the benshi, who don’t belong to the era when silent films, came out is literally breathing new life into these old works. The ephemeral has the possibility of being forever if that contradiction be allowed. Such was the assurance of the benshi. No wonder, it has been written, that some benshi were then considered more popular than the films they gave voice to.
Presently, the benshi could practically own a film because he is the living sound. Would Ozu, the director of Dragnet Girl, be happy with how he, Kataoka, is narrating the film? Was that a gleam in the Japanese artist’s eyes? Ozu liked to take control of his films and the presence of another artist giving the added dimension to his narrative would not amuse Ozu, Kataoka related to us.
Kataoka, the master storyteller, would reveal more about himself and his artistry. Marveling at the many voices and tones coming from his person, I asked if he developed voices for each particular character. The benshi disclosed he didn’t create many voices. He rather shifted his voices according to the relationships of the characters onscreen. It was our imagination, he said, that generated the impression he was a man of many voices.
I understood now what the literature on cinema had been telling us all this time. The benshi had become so powerful in those years that he was as much an integral element of cinema as the elements of cinema themselves.
The sound from the rondalla had come to a stop. The voice also ceased to flow from the benshi. Instead of distracting us, I felt in that gap a tension, a necessary pause that made us anticipate the next scene. Perhaps, the rondalla conductor was leading his group to another music. It didn’t matter. The gaps were not gaps but silences.
Silence is golden, Kataoka would emphasize this point. It was part of the artistry of the narrator to create the pause, to instill silence. This was, according to Kataoka, an important component in narrating. It is as much the role a benshi to create the sound where nothing exists and to withhold any sound.
The next evening, we were at the Shangri-La Plaza for the Silent Film Festival. It was the turn of Japan. The other countries will have their day, but that evening in the moviehouse, the staff and officers of Japan Foundation Manila were all busy preparing for the event. At the center of the lower part of the theater was a demarcated area for the orchestra, which was the rondalla. Wires were all over the place. At the left side was a lectern.
At a little past six, after Hiroaki Uesugi, the director of Japan Foundation Manila, had delivered the welcome remarks, the lights dimmed. The bass sound trembled with the guitars. A blue spotlight was trained onto the figure of the benshi standing. He was looking at the huge screen. Behind me, a female voice spoke in Japanese. She was telling her seatmate it was her first time to see a benshi perform. It was everyone’s first time, I muttered to myself. The face of Kinuyo Tanaka flashed onscreen, the iconic presence in many Japanese great films.
The face of Kataoka looked up at the figures. A voice, somber and golden, roared in the dark as the characters schemed and manipulated each other. As he flipped the pages of dialogues, his hands threw what looked like grand gestures amid the blue blight. The orchestra soared and then quieted down, the sounds went playful and quick.
In the dark, the silent film had ceased being silent. In the silence, stories were told and retold. These films will never die so long as the benshi lives. So long as there is one Japanese artist who believes in the power of the sound in the silences and in the dark.