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It’s funny people’s first reaction towards a set called The Art of Benshi is finding it annoying and asking if it could be turned off.

I mean, it is really annoying, at least based on the Mizoguchi ones I’ve seen. I doubt many people make it to the end without switching tracks or muting and reading the subtitles, descriptions of it don’t really give perspective on what it’s like to sit through something so counterintuitive to how we traditionally watch films

I will point out that Flicker Alley did pick the far superior of the two Mizoguchi features in this style to restore here, so that’s great news for everyone

Sadly, doesn't look like the 70's score for A Page of Madness is included. Oh well.

I may be missing something but does it state anywhere whether the benshi narration is in English or Japanese? Or does it vary with each feature?

It mentions English SDH subtitles which would generally imply English audio, yet at the bottom it also lists: "Language: Japanese"

I got the chance to watch some silents with benshi narration in Japan ("I was born but..."), but I'm not sure how well it would work in English.

The Mizoguchi ones were in Japanese and subtitled on the Japanese DVDs, and there weren’t intertitles (or they weren’t subbed if there were, can’t recall exactly) so you needed the subs for the spoken narration otherwise you’d be completely lost on the plot