Malle’s ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ at UCLA’s Melnitz

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Contemporary Documentary Series continues Tuesday at 8 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater with Louis Malle’s “. . . and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It’s an often amusing and always insightful survey of the contemporary emigre experience compiled by the director of the current and masterful “Au Revoir, Les Enfants.” His several U.S. films, most notably “Atlantic City” and “Alamo Bay,” reveal his keen understanding of the American experience in all its strengths and foibles.

”. . . and the Pursuit of Happiness” is an informal scrapbook of a movie composed of an irresistible array of vignettes depicting cultural accommodation and assimilation in all its variety.

On the one hand, there are the many success stories: the 35-year-old Ethiopian who after only 10 years in America holds a key job at Texas Instruments in Dallas; the East Indian motel owner in San Jose who has converted the barbecue in the kitchen of his ranch-style house into a traditional shrine; the revered young Vietnamese doctor who is the only physician in a small Midwestern town. On the other hand, there are the Southeast Asian immigrants who are only beginning to understand that they must stand with their black neighbors if they are to try to save their Houston housing project from urban renewal; there are Salvadorans caught in the tragic controversy over the sanctuary movement and, finally, there are the countless illegal aliens determined to keep crossing the Mexican border no matter how many times they are turned back.

Malle interviewed the first foreign-born astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, who is of Costa Rican and Chinese descent, and a Romanian who is walking 3,200 miles around Texas to demonstrate his love for his new country. But Malle’s real coup was his visit to the relatives of the late Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in their sprawling, modern suburban Miami house that is crammed with ornate European antiques better suited to a palace. While one of his nephews admits to being uncomfortable with his family’s bloody heritage, his father, once head of Nicaragua’s National Guard, sits impassively watching soap operas on the kitchen TV.

Playing with “. . . and the Pursuit of Happiness” is Lee Grant’s “Down and Out in America,” winner of the 1986 best feature documentary Oscar.

Information: (213) 825-2345, 825-2581.

Another delightful documentary, George Csicsery’s “Where the Heart Roams,” which screens Wednesday and Thursday at the Nuart, takes us into the world of romance writers and their audiences. Csicsery boards a special “Love Train” bound from California to a convention of authors and their fans in New York, where it is greeted by the gaudy queen of the genre, Barbara Cartland. The bejeweled and beplumed 86-year-old Cartland, a staunch upholder of virgin brides, is contrasted with Vivian Staples, a forthright editor who’s all for “a little more sensuality.”

The film is a charmer because Csicsery neither patronizes nor ridicules his subjects, who are by and large articulate, middle-class, middle-aged women. As a result, we are able to see the vast and lucrative phenomenon of the romance novel as a commentary on what is missing from so many women’s lives. This is not to say that Csicsery protects some of his interviewees from their own self-inflicted foolishness, which occurs often enough to make the film a foray into kitsch and camp. After all, you can hear Cartland on the sound track warbling “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and “Love Is My Dream.”

Information: (213) 478-6379, 479-5269.

After a disappointing opening weekend, UCLA’s “Yugolslav Film Today” resumes Thursday in Melnitz Theater with three winners. Significantly, all three are set against the immediate postwar era, a treacherous period of political witch-hunting when Tito was still gathering strength to defy Stalin.

Rajko Grlic’s “The Melody Haunts My Reverie” (1981), which screens Thursday at 7:30, stars wiry, intense Predrag Manojlovic (who also starred in the Oscar-nominated “When Father Was Away on Business”) and the beautiful Vladica Miloslavljevic in a heady, highly sensual romance between a crude ex-partisan and a well-bred ballerina whose love is as passionate as it is politically catastrophic. Manojlovic is a world-class actor, and his portrayal of a fiery, sensitive, brave and headstrong man is galvanic in its impact. (“Melody” will be followed by a repeat of Grlic’s more recent, far less impressive “In the Jaws of Life.” It will be preceded at 5:30 with Boro Draskovic’s “Life Is Beautiful” (1985), a grim, heavy-going contemporary allegory involving some stranded train passengers whose subsequent fate represents the total collapse of society.)

The richness, scope and universality of “The Melody Haunts My Reverie” also characterizes Stole Popov’s “Happy New Year 1949,” which screens Saturday at 7:30 and which was a highlight of the 1987 AFI Film Festival. A vital, intimate epic of intense passion and stunning visual beauty, it is a classic Cain-and-Abel tale in which a decent older brother (Meto Jovanoski) is jailed on a flimsy political pretext while his flashy, cynical younger brother (Svetozar Cvetkovic) drifts further and further into a life of crime. This film will be followed by a program of new Yugoslav animation.

Very similar in spirit to “The Melody Haunts My Reverie” and “Happy New Year 1949,” Nikola Stojanovic’s “The Golden Apple” is a family saga of survival in the postwar era centering on a dashing uncle, a farm labor official forced into hiding, and his young nephew, who is coming of age. In this film a concentration camp survivor remarks that “It was easier during the war. At least you knew who the enemy was.”

Information: (213) 835-2581.