‘MATINEE,’ ‘PLACE’ END MEXICO FILMS

Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s “Matinee” and Arturo Ripstein’s “A Place Without Limits,” which conclude the Nuart’s Cinema Mexico series Tuesday, are as raw as their color. The most “commercial” of the films in the series, “Matinee” (1977) is a tense, hard-driving adventure in which two young boys inadvertently become involved with an inept but dangerous pack of thieves, an experience which affects the two boys quite differently. (It’s amazing that “Matinee” hasn’t been remade by Hollywood.) The Tennessee Williams-like “A Place Without Limits” (1977) centers on a giddy but courageous drag queen and small-town bordello proprietor (Roberto Cobo). “A Place Without Limits” is above all an attack on oh-so-easily threatened machismo . Cobo is remarkable, a figure of disturbing sexual ambiguity who seems effeminate in men’s clothes but curiously masculine in a ruffled flamenco gown that emphasizes his wiry athlete’s physique. (213) 478-6379, 479-5269.

The UCLA Film Archives’ “Homage to the Cinematheque Francaise,” another treasure trove, ends Thursday in Melnitz Theater with three more gems: “Into the Night” (1930), in which Charles Vanel starred as well as directed (screening at 5:30 p.m.); Jean Renoir’s atypical 1928 “The Tournament in the City” (at 7:30 p.m.), which will be followed by actor Gaston Modot’s stunning 30-minute “Conte Cruel,” adapted from one of Villiers and l’Isle Adam’s short stories.

“Into the Night” reveals that Vanel, now celebrating three quarters of a century before the cameras, was as gifted a director as he is an actor. In this briskly ironic, beautifully composed tale, Vanel plays a miner so disfigured in an explosion that he wears a partial mask, a tragedy compounded by the unfaithfulness of his despondent wife (Sandra Milowanoff). The lavish, carefully crafted costume drama was not a Renoir specialty, but “The Tournament in the City” is a kind of swashbuckler turned back on itself. Set in Carcassone during the reign of Catherine de Medici, it takes place during a tournament held in the aftermath of a bloody struggle between Catholics and Protestants. Aldo Nadi may be as dashing as Errol Flynn, but he’s no hero--this in itself is virtually unique in the genre--but rather a spoiled, selfish Protestant aristocrat whose determined pursuit of the Catholic Catherine’s exquisite lady-in-waiting (Jackie Monnier) threatens an uneasy truce. The brutally exciting tournament sequences show that Renoir could handle action with dispatch when necessary. Modot made of “Conte Cruel” a chilling psychological masterpiece in miniature, directing himself as a victim of the Inquisition tortured by the hope of escape.

Among this week’s offerings in UCLA’s “Transitions: 1987 Asian Pacific American International Film Festival” are some imaginative work in animation and experimentation, which screen Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz and a survey of Asian-American actors working in Hollywood between 1915 to 1994, highlighted by a tribute to Anna May Wong, which will be presented Saturday at 7:30 p.m. by actress Kim Miyori. The work of the animators and experimenters reveals them far from being tied to their Asian heritage, yet capable of drawing upon it most effectively, as Mar Elepano did in his striking “Lion Dance.” Especially beautiful is Fu-Ding Cheng’s “Ethero,” a celebration of the power and mystery of a woman bearing a child. (213) 825-2345, 825-2581.

The three early Westerns that comprise Thursday’s program in the County Museum of Art’s fascinating “Before Hollywood” series suggest how emphatically the frontier was a man’s world. In Allan Dwan’s bleak, terse and thoroughly unsentimental “Maiden and Men” (1914) a naive, dreamy, dark-eyed beauty (Pauline Bush, the first Mrs. Dwan) takes a slave’s job at a ranch hoping to meet some men, not realizing that among the cowboys she’s as liable to attract unsavory types as well as nice guys. The heroine (Mabel Van Buren) doesn’t fare much better. She is being pursued by a paunchy, middle-aged sheriff (Theodore Roberts) and a big, handsome outlaw (House Peters), who is as addicted to holding up stagecoaches as the sheriff is to gambling. The plump, plain Van Buren’s is, however, as spunky as is Mary Dawson’s heroine in Thomas Ince’s “The Ruse” (1914). The laconic William S. Hart plays a gold miner who’s about to be duped by Dawson’s boss; the courageous lengths Dawson goes to protect Hart’s interests don’t go unrewarded--but not before she’s kidnaped, beaten and threatened with the fate worse than death. (213) 857-60l0.