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By Dan Leone

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COMPARED WITH THE typical melodramas of Hollywood silent cinema, silent Japanese films are unusually experimental. Unfortunately, few of these films have survived the ravages of war and time, so it's a treat to have the Pacific Film Archive present this series of Japanese silents. Five of the films will be presented as they were in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, with live performance by a narrator, or benshi. Midori Sawato is one of Japan's greatest benshis, a master of the vocal art of katsuben, an accompanying commentary on a film, which can be appreciated even by non-Japanese speakers. Traditionally, benshis appeared not only at Japanese films but also at American films, as will be demonstrated by Sawato's accompaniment to Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 yellow-peril melodrama The Cheat (Sept. 15). Don't miss the rare opportunity to experience early Japanese films by Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, as well as by lesser-known masters such as Mikio Naruse and Daisuke Ito, in the way they were originally screened. Especially recommended is Ozu's 1932 comic masterpiece I Was Born But ... (Sept. 15), a charming satire of a worker's obsequious behavior to his boss, as seen through the eyes of his lovably irascible sons. Ozu artistically uses the subtlest details, and his young stars will capture your affection. Anyone who saw Teinosuke Kinugasa's electrifying avant-garde work A Page of Madness at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival will want to catch his follow-up, 1928's Crossways (Sept. 20), shown with live koto music by Miya Masaoka. The series also offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Shin Chul, the last pyonsa (the Korean equivalent of the benshi), narrate the only surviving Korean silent film, 1948's The Public Prosecutor and the Teacher (Sat/7, Wheeler Auditorium, and Sept. 14, New PFA Theater). See Rep Clock for this week's show times. (Summers Henderson)