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August 03, 2007
El Automovil Gris
Mexican avant garde theater company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes made a grand appearance at the Dallas Video Festival this evening, performing their interpretive exhibition - or, rather, reappropriation - of Enrique Rosas' 1919 film El Automóvil Gris, a silent era thriller about a gang of criminals in Mexico city. The film is famous for its use of actual participants in the true-crime case; it's an early example of shaky fourth wall, which makes it ideal for the context in which theater director Claudio Valdés-Kuri has recast it: he presents the film in the traditional Japanese style of benshi narration, in which an actor stands aside the screen, providing a non-stop stream voices, sound effects and commentary on the film itself.
And so for the first fifteen minutes of the performance, we're watching a Mexican film with occasional English subtitles and live narration in Japanese. We're still trying to follow the film's plot at this point - but then a second narrator appears, commenting not on the film in question but on the long tradition and historical significance of the benshi discipline. Shortly thereafter, a third performer joins the fray, this one speaking in Spanish; later, English is introduced to the mix and the narration takes detours into live song and dance, by which point the subtitles on the screen have gone haywire, swirling across the screen in their own interpretations of each other. By the time the film ends with the very real execution of the actual Grey Automobile gang, the plot has gone right out the window; this is a exuberant celebration of glorious meta-narrativity.
Valdéz-Kuri and his troupe of actors have been performing El Automovil Gris around the country for the past few years (Roger Ebert reviewed it here back in 2003). It apparently took quite a bit of work to get it to Dallas (a collaboration between the DVF, the Asian Film Festival of Dallas and the Vistas Film Festival), but thank god it did - this is an unforgettable experience. If you have the chance to see it, dear reader, take care that you sit in the front row.
Tonight, another bit of silent-film magic will be on display: the local premiere of Guy Maddin's Brand Upon The Brain!
Posted by David Lowery at August 3, 2007 04:42 AM