A MASTERPIECE BEFORE ‘RASHOMON’

Heinosuke Gosho’s “Woman of the Mist” (screening Thursday at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, 7:30 p.m.), made in 1936, remains a timeless masterpiece and is perhaps the best film in the ongoing “Before ‘Rashomon’ ” series.

Gosho grew up in Tokyo’s old downtown business district, which is the quaint, crowded setting of this film, and the affection and compassion with which he regards its hard-working, breezy denizens suffuse it from start to finish. With humor as well as pathos, he depicts the predicament of a handsome, spoiled youth (Shin Tokodaiji) who gets a pretty, fading bar hostess (Toshiko Iizuka) pregnant. Although help comes in an unexpected way, it is in the noble Japanese tradition of self-sacrifice, echoing the sacrifices that the youth’s widowed mother (Choko Iida, adorably vivacious) has made to send him to law school. Expressive in the utmost, “Woman of the Mist” evokes an all-but-vanished world yet has a remarkable immediacy. Judging from the first reel of Kajiro Yamamoto’s 1938 “Composition Class” (playing with “Woman of the Mist”), it looks to be a fine film in a neorealist style. It stars the teen-age Hideko Takamine, already an accomplished actress, as a bright girl from an impoverished background whose prize in a composition class has unexpected repercussions. The paired films reflect the enduring Japanese respect for education.

Screening Sunday at 2 p.m.: Tomotaka Tasaka’s “Airplane Drone” (1939) and Keisuke Kinoshita’s “Army” (1944).

War as a metaphor informs both of Thursday evening’s remarkable Israeli films at the Nuart. Made in 1978, Ilan Moshenson’s “The Wooden Gun” is a chillingly poetic study of the impact of war on children. The setting is Tel Aviv, 1950, when Israel was receiving many refugees from war-ravaged Europe while still struggling for its own existence, with the reclamation of Jerusalem a sacred goal. The action centers on a group of schoolboys who are reflexively waging their own war against each other. Their elders are aware of their battles and disapprove, yet fail to take them seriously enough. The contradictions of the time and place are deftly summed up in a scene in which a father savagely beats his small son--all the while screaming “No more war!”

Director Uri Barabash and writer Eran Price’s 1982 “Stigma” has much the claustrophobic intensity of last week’s “Noa at 17.” Daringly, the film makers contrast their hero’s exit from a mental institution at the beginning of the film with troops heading for Lebanon at the end, identifying the invasion with madness. (Unfortunately, this crucial point may be lost in translation via the subtitles.) In its foreground, “Stigma” concerns itself with the former mental patient’s attempt to come to terms with his life in the reserve forces and with his estranged wife. This is a very powerful work in a naturalistic style.

This week’s special treat in UCLA’s “Archival Treasures” series is a three-hour compilation of vintage TV (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. at Melnitz). Ranging from Rudy Vallee explaining how TV works in a 1931 Paramount newsreel to Martin and Lewis, Uncle Miltie and kinescopes of Queen Elizabeth’s 1947 wedding, this presentation is chock-full of rarities. Saturday’s archive program is a double feature from Republic’s A-picture unit of the ‘40s: Ben Hecht’s arty “Specter of the Rose” (1946), inspired by the Nijinsky legend, and a restored version of Orson Welles’ “Macbeth” (1948).

The Marlene Dietrich tribute continues at the County Museum of Art with “The Garden of Allah” and “Kismet” (Friday at 8 p.m.) and “Destry Rides Again” and “Flame of New Orleans” (Saturday, 8 p.m.). “Destry,” of course, is the rowdy 1939 Western that revitalized Dietrich’s career; “Kismet” is memorable for the gilding of Dietrich’s famous legs. Maximilian Schell’s captivating 1984 documentary “Marlene” will have a preview screening at 8 p.m. Sunday.

D. W. Griffith’s “Isn’t Life Wonderful?” (1924), with Carol Dempster and Neil Hamilton, and “The Idol Dancer” (1920) with Richard Barthelmess and Clarine Seymour screen Tuesday at the Vagabond. On Friday, Ann Savage is scheduled to appear in person there for the screening of two of her films, Edgar Ulmer’s classic “Detour” (1945) and “The Last Crooked Mile” (1945).

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