THE FOX INTERNATIONAL STRUTS STUFF IN VENICE

Located in Venice, the Fox International Theater is one of the last of the area’s independently owned movie houses--and practically the only non-chain “art film” theater around.

But it’s not just its unusual and provocative programming (festivals devoted to women film makers, African and Black American films, Godard, Naruse) that makes the Fox special. After all, there are other local theaters--the Laemmle and Landmark chains and the Beverly Center Cineplex--that do yeoman service in foreign and art-film presentation.

The Fox wins your heart because it’s practically a mom-and-pop operation. Manager-booker-owners Rafigh Pooya and Barbara Bryan are often on hand to greet their customers. On one side of the theater is a small, gleaming international cafe, stocked with cappuccino, almond tortes and chocolate mousse (and rental videotapes). On the other is a photo center. Up front is an offbeat snack bar (Toblerone chocolates, Otis Spunkmeyer Cookies and Frutella juices). Lining the walls is a collection of videotapes--in packages designed by Pooya--that Pooya and Bryan’s company, International Home Cinema, distributes nationally. Included in I.H.C.’s stock: two recent winners of the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, and one winner of the Cannes Grand Prize.

Currently the Fox is in the midst of its second annual “Best of the Fox” series: a reprise of the cream of its recent schedules.

Today and Wednesday, the theater brings back one of its finest pictures: Nelson Periera Dos Santos’ “Memories of Prison,” 1984 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize winner, and an intensely moving portrayal of isolation, imprisonment and courage in a totalitarian state. The film is based on the memoirs of novelist Graciano Ramos and his incarceration by Brazil’s Vargas dictatorship. Few prison dramas surpass this one: Few are more harrowingly honest, have less melodrama, or more serenity and compassion.

Two Yugoslavian comedies--both taking a sly, black Rabelaisan look at their country--fill out the lists until Saturday. Goran Paskaljevic’s “Special Treatment” (Thursday) is a daffy farce about an alcoholism treatment center weirdly mixed up with a hypocritical brewery owner. Slobodan Sijan’s “Who’s Singin’ Over There?” (Friday and Saturday) mixes Bunuel’s social satire, Ford’s “Stagecoach” picaresque touch and the wry, jesting mood of Huston’s “Beat the Devil” in an intoxicating brew. A busload of bickering passengers--on an incredibly ramshackle bus run by a bully and an idiot--head toward Belgrade on Yugoslavia’s last day of peace before the local outbreak of World War II.

On Sunday, the Fox brings back one of its biggest surprise hits: Kristo Papic’s “The Secret of Nikola Tesla”--a Yugoslavian film on the legendary scientific genius and electronics maverick. In it, in a last meaty supporting role (as financier J. P. Morgan), is Orson Welles. Information: (213) 396-4215.

The Irene Dunne tribute at the County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater would also gladden any film buff’s celluloid dreams. Dunne found her niche as the sophisticated lady supreme plunged into life’s Depression madness. As much as Carole Lombard, Dunne was a screwball comedy queen, mixing glamour and dizziness, elegance and spunk, romance and razzmatazz.

On this weekend’s lineup, however, there’s only one screwball film: Garson Kanin’s “My Favorite Wife” (Saturday). This is the one where Dunne--marooned for years on a desert island--is a bone of contention between husband Cary Grant and island-mate Randolph Scott.

Two great Dunne tear-jerkers are on the bill Friday and Saturday, respectively: Leo McCarey’s satiny and superb shipboard romance “Love Affair,” and George Stevens’ “Penny Serenade” (an adoption tale that would make a stone weep). Her co-star in the first is homme fatale Charles Boyer. In the second, again it’s Cary Grant--in one of his only two Oscar-nominated roles.

In later years, Dunne relinquished her screwball--or tearjerking--crown and became a grande dame. And grande dames aren’t as much fun--as you can see Friday ominously prefigured in the stiff-upper-lip gloss of MGM’s “The White Cliffs of Dover” (directed by Clarence Brown). Information: (213) 857-6201.