Commentary : Will New-Fangled Cable Service Save Art Films From Oblivion?

South of Los Angeles, the list of theaters offering high-brow, low-budget movies outside the mainstream is short and growing shorter.

Apart from the Port in Corona del Mar, the Balboa Cinema in Newport Beach and the Bay in Seal Beach, there are few venues for such movies, the Art Theatre in Long Beach being the latest to give up the ghost.

True, in recent years the Edwards Town Center in Costa Mesa has been devoting at least one of its screens to more venturesome fare, like “Pelle the Conqueror” and the appearance earlier this month of the gritty British comedy “High Hopes” at the AMC MainPlace in Santa Ana was another hopeful sign.

The problem is that intellectually challenging films like “La Lectrice,” now playing at the Balboa, are sometimes gone before there’s time to get to the theater. Then--because of disappointing box office--they may not make it to local video stores for years, if at all. If they are up to the standards of “Babette’s Feast,” “Au Revoir les Enfants,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” or “Manon of the Spring,” rental outlets may stock one or two copies.

The Z Channel seemed to be the last best hope for such films. But now, sadly, that outlet plans to show nothing but sports starting June 30.

Could Cable Video Store, the new, pioneering “pay-per-view” system unveiled earlier this week by Comcast Cablevision of Orange County, be the salvation of the “little” movies that rarely make it to the mall or the chain video store?

With the new system, now being installed in Newport Beach, subscribers can purchase a single movie simply by hitting two buttons on their remote control. The cost ranges from $1.99 to $3.99. A good sign, albeit a small one, is that the charmingly offbeat “Some Girls” is among the Cable Video Store’s May offerings.

For the present, pay-per-view operations like the Cable Video Store are aiming for the same blockbusters as the video stores and movie channels like HBO. With a relatively small national subscriber base of between 750,000 and 1 million, they have little choice.

Ultimately, said Ken Nimmer, Cable Video Store’s vice president for programming, as the subscriber base expands and competition for the “big” movies intensifies, programming smaller movies may become economically attractive.

Across this country--if not across this county--there are surely enough movie-goers who survived campus Bergman, Bunuel and Godard festivals to support the works of John Sayles and Spike Lee. Especially if all they need to do is press a button and pay $3.99.