MIXING MEDIA IN ‘DRAGON PAINTER’

An old Japanese tradition combining live performances with silent films will be revived tonight at the Japan America Theatre.

Veteran actor Mako, organist Robert Israel and percussionist William Edwards are scheduled to accompany a screening of Sessue Hayakawa’s 1919 classic “The Dragon Painter,” often considered his finest film.

The show is a $100-per-person benefit for the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. A dinner is scheduled for 6 p.m., with the performance to follow at 8.

Mako and the musicians will be reviving the almost lost art of katsuben performances, which flourished in Japanese movie houses during the silent film era but died out after the introduction of sound.

Derived from the words for motion and speaker, katsuben performances originated as a way for Japanese audiences to understand the untranslated title cards in foreign silent movies. The live performers, who appeared on stage during the film, used exaggerated speech, singing and chanting to complement and narrate the action on the screen.

“The performers are the human links between the viewer and the picture,” organist Israel said in an interview. “In fact, they create the spontaneous element in the audience that heightens the film-going experience.”

An international twist of fate led to tonight’s screening. When a film archivist from New York’s Museum of Modern Art went looking for an early print of the American-made movie, the only surviving copy he found had French titles. That, say the organizers of tonight’s show, made “Dragon Painter” an ideal candidate for a katsuben event.

When Asian-American actor Mako was approached by a representative of Japan America Theatre to narrate the movie, he said he was delighted to take part in a revival of a tradition he remembers from his childhood in Tokyo.

“I admire the passion with which Hayakawa attacked his subject matter,” said Mako, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965 for his role in “The Sand Pebbles.” He also said he was impressed with the scenery of the film, which was shot in California’s Yosemite Valley.

Film maker and actor Hayakawa is best known to American audiences as the Japanese prison camp colonel in the 1957 film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” But he already was popular by the time his company produced “The Dragon Painter.” In it, he plays a free-spirited painter who loses his creative powers when he finally discovers true love.

“The narrator’s role is to push forward the story and not become the central focus,” Mako said.

Likewise, the music, especially composed for tonight’s performance, shouldn’t overwhelm the action on the screen, suggested Israel, a 23-year-old senior at Cal State Northridge who recently played the organ for the MGM silent film series at UCLA.

Israel said he wanted to avoid cliched Oriental music for the movie, as well as the traditional ragtime that often accompanies silents.

“I tried to include a certain Western influence, considering the fact the film was shot in Yosemite, and also added a subtle Oriental theme,” he said.

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