Neo-Benshi: It Happened One Night

Karolo Sukceno’s Neo-Benshi soundtrack to a scene from It Happened One Night – at Hudson Hall, Hudson, NY on Aug. 30, 2024. Clip selected by Jeffrey Lependorf for the Flow Chart Foundation event. Neo-Benshi performers create new soundracks for films, usually live.

PennSound link: mp4
additional short clip of stage performance: mp4

Introduction:
Karolo Sukceno is a professor of Earth and Intergalactic Studies at the Royal Cosmogonic Institution in Pluto, where he specializes in the gods and demons of the homo saplings. He is the author of Walzing Matilda, a frame-by-frame reading of Tim Walz’s breakthrough performance in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Karolo will present an excerpt from his most recent book Leni and Frank: The Legends Behind the Myths, in which he discusses Why We Fight, Frank Capra’s 1944 response to Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 film, Triumph of the Will. Tonight Karolo talks about a clip I selected for him from Capra’s 1934 It Happened One Night. His talk will be simultaneously translated from Esperanto by AI – Alien Intelligence.

Script:
This is Her Majestic Holiness Claudette talking to the Lord Gable, of the House of the Seven Gables. They are two principal gods of the Northern Hollywoodlandish people, incarnating Imagination, Gable, and Fantasy, Claudette. Here we see the Lord Gable erecting a ritual flag or chastity curtain, known as a Borcht Belt.. The setting is Casablanca, USA. and the title of this saga is It Happened One Night. It in the title refers to the rescue of the Archangel Viktor Lazlo, which, according to Northern Hollywoodlandish myth, can only be achieved by blocking sexual congress between the Lord Gable and Her Majestic Holiness Claudette. We can see that the Lord Gable has unfurled an American flag. For the Northern Hollywoodlandish, this flag is all that stands between democracy and fascism. But the Lord Gable is brooding about a previous encounter between the two gods in Paris, Texas.

C Don’t you see what’s happening? Don’t you see Why … why It … It Can’t Happen Here. Right now, the Nutzis are laying out plans to free the Unified Reich of the Juden settler-colonialists: they are calling it the final solution of the Juden problem. Adenoid Hynkel is saying if you vote for him you will never have to vote again: he alone can fix it. And the Evil Geni Leni is filming the whole thing.

G Well it will have to be Old King Capra who responds to Leni, not me.

C: Abracadabra!: Old King Capra will respond, you’ll see he’ll make Why We Fight against The Triumph of the Will.

I wouldn't have come if I had known that you were here. Believe me, that's the truth, I didn't know. I can understand how you feel: standing on a station platform in the rain with a comical look on your face, because your insides had been kicked out.

You want to feel sorry for yourself, don't you? With so much at stake, all you can think of is your own feelings. One woman has hurt you, and you take your revenge on the
rest of the world. You're a coward, and a weakling.

No. Oh, I'm sorry. But you are our last hope. lf you don't help us, Victor Laszlo will
die in Casablanca.

G: What of it? …. I'm going to die in Casablanca. It's just the spot for it. ….
I'm not fighting for anything anymore -- except myself. {pause} I'm the only Cause I'm interested in.!

C I tried to stay away.

G Tell me, who was it you left me for? Was it Lazlo or were there others in between. Or aren’t you the kind that tells. If Laszlo and the Cause mean so much to you, you won't stop at anything.

C I thought I would never see you again, that you were out of my life. I let you get away from me once. I can't do it again.

G I thought we’d lost it, – but now – Well, maybe we’re getting it back.

We’ll always have Paris

The day you left Paris, if you knew what I went through! If you knew how much I loved you -- how much I still love you – I know that I'll never have the strength to stay away from you again.

G It’s still a story without an ending.

C I don't know what's right any longer. You'll have to think for both of us, for all of us. But l will never leave you!

G And you never Will. But I've got a job to do, too. We’ve got to stop the fascists. And this won’t be the last time. They will keep coming back and we have to be ready. We are going to have to keep fighting them again and again.

Where I'm going you can't follow -- what I've got to do - you can be no part of. l 'm not good at being noble. -- But it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. … Someday you'll understand that. Not now.

Here's looking at you kid.