LADD’S THE REAL PLUS IN ‘GATSBY’

The 1949 version of “The Great Gatsby,” which screens tonight at UCLA Melnitz Theater as part of the Paramount series, plays like a terse, film noir -ish ‘40s melodrama. And its interior scenes seem to owe more to the Owen Davis stage adaptation than to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel.

Elliott Nugent directed from a script by Richard Maibaum, who is currently enjoying a major hit with “The Living Daylights” and was the producer or writer of some of Paramount’s most prestigious ‘40s pictures.

The 1974 version starring Robert Redford captured a sense of time and place far better, and its spaciousness accommodated Fitzgerald’s symbolism and mythology involving the treacherousness of the American Dream far more comfortably. But the 1949 film had a real plus in Alan Ladd. Yes, Alan Ladd, then near the height of his popularity, yet so often derided as the great stone face of the screen. There’s always been something vaguely ethnic about Jay Gatsby, and while Ladd was as much a blue-eyed blond WASP as Redford, there’s a tinge of melancholy and a sense of the loner in Ladd that makes his Gatsby, the bootlegger with a self-destructive craving for respectability, immeasurably poignant.

Ladd’s Gatsby expresses such a naked sense of joy when he’s reunited with Daisy Buchanan (Betty Field, as effective as Mia Farrow in the later version), the aristocratic but weak-willed love of his life, that he’s truly heartbreaking. As the inescapable personification of everything Jay Gatsby ever wanted to be, the self-assured Redford, by way of contrast, had no where to go in the role. “The Great Gatsby” follows the screening of “Samson and Delilah” at 6 p.m. and “The Heiress” at 8 p.m.

George Pal’s “The War of the Worlds” (1953) and “When Worlds Collide” (1951), which screen Thursday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz, also as part of the Paramount retrospective, may seem quaint in this era of razzle-dazzle special effects. But they are actually triumphs of cinematic artistry and a tribute to producer Pal’s sheer resourcefulness. Their modest budgets may show but they are intensely pictorial, consistently imaginative and briskly paced. They could also serve as textbook models of artful montage.

The first, which stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson and was directed by Byron Haskin, is based on the H. G. Wells tale of a Martian invasion, and the second, which stars Richard Derr and Barbara Rush and was directed by Rudolph Mate, tells what happens when it’s discovered that the earth will be struck by a star in nine months.

UCLA Film Archives continues Saturday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater with Amnon Rubinstein’s beguiling “Nadia.” Written by Rubinstein with Eitan Green and Galila Ron-Feder, “Nadia” avoids all the cliches one might expect about a story about a beautiful 16-year-old Arab girl (Hana Azulai-Hasfari) who enrolls in an Israeli boarding school near Tel Aviv so as to be better prepared to pursue her goal of becoming a doctor.

True, Rubinstein does want to make a plea for Israeli-Arab brotherhood, but it grows out of his characters and is no heavy-handed message. Actually, Nadia, after some mutual uneasiness with the other students, fits into the school quite well and makes more of the educational opportunity than her classmates, most of whom are restless kids shunted there from broken homes. She attracts the school’s leading rebel (Yuval Banai), a wiry, intense guy, but tells him firmly they’re not going to be a Romeo and Juliet.

It’s one thing, however, to deflect a Jewish suitor and another to handle a nearby attack by Arab terrorists. “Nadia” has an edgy, engaging spontaneity that’s as natural in its appeal as its actors.

Playing with “Nadia” is Mira Recanati’s subtle, complex “A Thousand Little Kisses,” a study of a self-destructive, middle-aged mother (Dina Doronne) whose possessiveness is driving away her daughter (Rivka Neuman). (For the record “Nadia” played at the Monica 4-Plex in December, 1985, and was shown at the 1982 Filmex.)

UCLA-Melnitz series information: (213) 825-2581. Note: The Paramount 75th Anniversary Tribute continues at the County Museum of Art as well; for its schedule: (213) 857-6031 or 857-6010.