A Candid Look at Soviet Life and Some Treasures from Japan

Georgi Gavrilov’s “Confession: A Chronicle of Alienation” is the latest in a spate of documentaries from the Soviet Union that are breathtaking in their candor and in their bold, impressionistic style.

Indeed, this film--which the UCLA Film Archive is presenting Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater, with Gavrilov present--is so bravura that it counteracts the bleakness one would expect from the chronicle of a young, hippie-esque drug addict. Gavrilov manages to make his subject’s addiction, his anti-Marxist/Leninist views and his burgeoning spirituality a sharp critique of rigid, oppressive Soviet life without taking away the young man’s responsibility for his condition. A remarkable film.

The archive’s “The Cutting Edge II” series continues Thursday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater with Derek Jarman’s apocalyptic, surreal “The Last of England” (1987), envisioning Britain after the fall of government, and Saturday at 8 with longtime Godard associate Anne Marie Mieville’s disappointing “My Favorite Story” (1988). Mieville’s debut feature is an intricately textured and structured account of three generations of women and their longings that is surprisingly conventional and uninvolving in effect. Information: (213) 206-8013, 206-FILM.

“Horse” (1941) and “The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail” make up the first of three double-feature, weeklong engagements of Akira Kurosawa’s earliest films, starting Friday at the Little Tokyo Cinema 2. “The Most Beautiful” (1944) and “One Wonderful Sunday” (1947) open Sept. 8, and the series concludes with “Sanshiro Sugata” (1943) and “Sanshiro Sugata, Part II,” beginning Sept. 15.

“Horse” was directed by Kurosawa’s mentor, Kajiro Yamamoto, but he gave Kurosawa, as his assistant director, such latitude that Yamamoto himself has said that “he was much more than that; he was more like my other self.” Kurosawa collaborated on the script as well as served as second-unit director, responsible for the rugged location sequences while Yamamoto handled the studio interiors. Although “Horse” is a seamless work, there are several instances when the film takes off with such dash and vigor that the signature of Kurosawa is unmistakable.

The film is a beautiful and stirring drama of peasant life with a Renoir-like reverence for nature. It centers on a pretty, teen-age girl (Hideko Takamine, already a major star) whose love for her horse represents an escape from a harsh, impoverished existence exacerbated by a chronic clash of wills with her no-nonsense mother (Chieko Takahisa). The household also includes the girl’s farmer father (Kamatari Fujiwara, who was to become a Kurosawa regular), four younger children and an elderly grandmother (Kaoru Futaba).

If Yamamoto, a skilled director in his own right, gave Kurosawa considerable latitude and opportunity, Kurosawa has in turn spoken of his debt to his teacher. There is a strong humanist sentiment in “Horse” attributable to Yamamoto that has characterized Kurosawa’s work ever since, but the foreshadowing of Kurosawa’s own dynamic style occurs in a scene where the girl rides her horse, galloping alongside the train bearing her younger brother to Tokyo, that anticipates all the great Kurosawa tracking shots to come. Another perfectly sustained scene has the girl, returning home after a year’s absence, trying to locate her horse’s colt in a large herd. (The Kurosawa twist is to have the animal seek her out.)

Completed toward the end of World War II under stringent conditions that demanded that Kurosawa make full use of the resources of the camera, “The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail” parodies an old Kabuki drama: a famous general and his retainers must disguise themselves as monks to pass a checkpoint held by the forces of the enemy, who is the general’s brother. This sly and garrulous 59-minute comedy of manners turns on whether or not the young official (Susumu Fujita) at the checkpoint recognizes the general. Kurosawa subtly managed to uphold humanist values in the midst of war, but the film ironically offended both the wartime militarists and the subsequent Occupation censor and was not released until 1953. Information: (213) 687-7077.