UCLA JOLSON TRIBUTE BEGINS TONIGHT

The UCLA Film Archives’ Tribute to Al Jolson, whose centenary was celebrated last May, commences tonight at 6 in Melnitz Theater with “The Jazz Singer” (1927) and “Wonder Bar” (1934) at 8. “Go Into Your Dance” (1935) and “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” (1933) screen Tuesday; “The Singing Kid” (1936) and “The Jolson Story” (1946), in which Larry Parks plays Jolson, screen Wednesday. For more information: (213) 206-8013.

Ironically, the reason that the original “The Jazz Singer,” the movie that ushered in the talkies, is so much more potent than any of its remakes is that it is essentially a silent with only the songs--and some ad-libbing--in sound. Directed by Alan Crosland, the Samson Raphaelson play about a man torn between his dream of becoming a popular singer and the dictates of his religion, upheld by his stern immigrant cantor father, is so outrageously sentimental that it needs all the eloquence and detachment that only images can give it.

There’s no doubt, too, that the film benefits from Jolson’s ability to identify with the ambitious Jack Robin (ne Jakie Rabinowitz), for Jolson--whose super-charged style made him the greatest entertainer of his day--was himself born (in St. Petersburg, Russia) Asa Joelson, the son of a cantor.

But it’s those ad-libs that really electrify. When Jolson cried “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, folks! Listen to this,” he fell back on an introductory phrase that had become his Broadway trademark but in the larger context, of course, became famously prophetic. Later on, after singing to his mother (Eugenie Besserer) the first chorus of “Blue Skies,” Jolson ad-libbed about 250 words of devotion to her; at that precise moment we’re watching the death of one art form and the birth of another. (The other jolter: the unexpected and extraordinary poignancy Jolson achieved when donning the now much-maligned blackface.)

“Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” is one of those slight--but in this case, also tedious--Runyonesque fantasies designed to cheer those Depression blues away. Jolson, however, is surprisingly--and attractively--low-key as a Central Park hobo who falls for an amnesiac beauty (Madge Evans), who--unknown to Jolson--is the lost love of his pal, the mayor (Frank Morgan).

The Goethe Institute’s series of films relating to the Third Reich and the Holocaust continues with Usch Barthelmess-Weller and Werner Meyer’s “The Children of No. 67,” which will screen tonight at 8 at the Gallery Theater in Barnsdall Park, and Pavel Schnabel and Harald Luders’ “Now After All These Years,” which screens Tuesday at 7:15 p.m. at the Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust, 6505 Wilshire Blvd. For further information: (213) 653-5979.

Set in a big old Berlin working-class apartment house, “The Children of No. 67” is virtually plotless, capturing the rhythms of everyday life as they subtly take on an increasingly ominous note, and the Brown Shirts become less and less a joke and more and more a dark, dangerous power. This splendidly understated film begins with the joyous tearing down of a Nazi flag, but it ends with two young boys, best pals, at last driven apart by the triumph of Hitler.

In 1939 the small picture-book town of Rhina had more Jewish families than Gentile--but none at all after 1939. Documentarians Schnabel and Luders asked questions about the Jews and got evasive answers. All that survived of the Jews, besides an unkempt graveyard, was a collection of compositions written by Jewish schoolchildren in 1928. From that sole artifact the film makers were able to track down in New York’s Washington Heights a tiny group of Rhina Jews. What they have to say is quite different from what their onetime Gentile neighbors have said; this one-hour film could have been lifted from “Shoah.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., will screen tonight at 8 its rare three-strip Technicolor, four-track stereo print of the one and only “Gone With the Wind” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Mitchell’s novel that served as its basis. Phone: (213) 278-8990.

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