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El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile)
Written by Nic Velissaris
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Left - Irene Akiko Iida. Cover - Ernesto Gomez Santana. Photos - Jose Jorge Carreon

Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes' El Automovil Gris is a fascinating idea. Take an old classic Mexican silent film, El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile) and present it to an audience utilising the Japanese Tradition of the Benshi, storytellers who were famous for translating and recounting silent films to Japanese audiences in the 1920’s and 30’s. Layered on top of this is a selected English translation, appearing as subtitles on the screen that further mangles and twists the story.

El Automovil Gris recounts the true story of the Grey Automobile (a 1914 Fiat for those interested) that terrorised Mexico City during and after the Mexican Revolution. A gang of men dressed as Policemen would knock on a rich family’s door, produce a legitimate search warrant and then proceed to rob the house and assault those who lived there, making their getaway in their Grey Automobile.

The recreation of this story by Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes begins as an earnest retelling of the events which the film accurately dramatises, but soon degenerates into a broad farce, that highlights the satirical possibilities of having non-native speakers translate a film, even a silent film, to an unsuspecting audience. At times the comedy is a little simplistic but at other times it approaches the sublime, with its tongue-in-cheek references to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or the old man with big moustache who talks like Donald Duck (and it seems only natural that he does).

The weakest element is easily the English translation which seems to work against the other elements that the live performers and pianist are striving to create. The live music is put to good use, playing upon accepted cinematic clichés, and enabling the Benshi performers to tap-dance and break into song at odd moments. Unfortunately the performance ends on a surreal note, because as the film itself draws to its conclusion with actual footage of the criminals being shot by a firing squad, the Benshi performers are strangely silent. Though this may be intentional, it doesn’t actually elevate the gravitas of finale or elicit the shock that it’s supposed to; instead it leaves the audience more confused than anything else.

El Automovil Gris is a funny surreal experience that invigorates not only silent film but revives the Benshi tradition and even if the experience is at times uneven, it is still an experience worth having.


Melbourne International Arts Festival presents
El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile)
Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes

Venue: The CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre
When: Thu 16 – Sat 18 Oct at 8pm
Duration: 1hr 30min no interval
Prices: Full $35 / Groups (8+) $31.50 / Concession $26.25 / Student / MF-Y $25
Bookings: Ticketmaster 1300 136 166 / www.melbournefestival.com.au
The CUB Malthouse (03) 9685 5111

Sorry, this review was written after the last screening. -- Bruce

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 77,00.html

Moving turns emerge from clever chaos
Alison Croggon | October 20, 2008
The Grey Automobile
Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse.
Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes. October 17.

AS this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival enters its second week, I am a little dizzied by the variety of performance I've encountered. It has ranged from the multimedia total theatre of DJ Spooky to the mischievously schizoid stage of Chunky Move's Two Faced Bastard, and from the environmental children's theatre of Polyglot to the spectacular image-making of Back to Back.

Beyond the focus on human connection that has characterised all of Kristy Edmunds's festivals, the 2008 festival could be thought of as a showcase of the possibilities of performance, a celebration of artistic inventiveness.

El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile) is a classic Mexican silent film made in 1919 about a bunch of gangsters who terrorised Mexico City four years earlier. The film is a classic cops and robbers melodrama, but it is also a fascinating historical document, starring some of the gang's victims re-enacting the crimes in their original locations.

And it has scenes of violence that still have the power to shock. One is a cock fight, for which director Enrique Rosas filmed the real thing; another is the execution of the criminals, for which he used real footage he shot himself. Cinema-verite indeed.

Mexican theatrical company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes presents it using (and abusing) the traditional Japanese art of benshi, which flourished in the era of silent films and died with the talkies. Feeling that a performance wasn't complete without the voice, the Japanese showed films with live actors providing commentary and dialogue.

The Grey Automobile is not merely an exercise in live dubbing, although the vocally dexterous performers, whose interpretations range from straight dialogue to sheer nonsense, manage this with wit and inventiveness. The film's subtitles, for example, are feral: they begin somewhat uncertainly, appearing at eccentric intervals in Spanglish, before settling down and obediently translating the dialogue in correct (if colourful) English.

About halfway through they rebel and begin to appear anywhere they like on screen, in different fonts and sizes.

The chaos deepens when the voice-overs become animal noises and we get subtitles of barking in seven languages. Or when the film briefly turns into an opera. Sometimes the actors speak in English and the subtitles are Spanish. Sometimes the dialogue is Japanese, Russian or German. In between are a couple of song-and-dance routines and helpful commentaries on the history of benshi. It's an often hilarious conceit that manages to be constantly surprising.

(snipped)

On YouTube I found a sequence of this program, shut in Mexico, not in Australia. It gives an interesting impression:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Y7isIqv2I

I saw this years ago with Spanish titles, no benshi nor mangled English, and thought it quite a fine film for 1919. It is one of the only Mexican silents that survived the fire that basically wiped out their national film archive, as the material was apparently out of the archive at the time.

It was good enough to make one regret what was lost.

I believe there are bookable prints in some Mexican embassies. We borrowed it for the DGA from the Mexican consulate in Chicago.

David Shepard

Now where does one try & buy the DVD referred to?