UCLA to Screen Tchalgadjieff Retrospective

In the world of film making, avant-garde directors and writers are always easy to find. But Stephane Tchalgadjieff, subject of a current retrospective at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater ((213) 206-8013), is an obvious exception: an avant-garde producer. Many of the most interesting post-’60s experimentalist features in the French cinema--by Godard, Jacques Rivette, Marguerite Duras and others--owe their existence to him.

At the pinnacle of achievement on this week’s sample of his output are Rivette’s 1973 “Out One: Spectre” (Thursday), and Robert Bresson’s 1977 “The Devil, Probably” (Saturday). At four hours, “Out One: Spectre” is the “short” version of Rivette’s 13-hour 1971 “Out One,” a bizarrely intricate tale of intrigues swirling around a Parisian experimental theatrical troupe, struggling to mount a production of Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound.” This mix--classical theater and urban paranoia--is a familiar Rivette device, to which he returns repeatedly in films like “Paris Belongs to Us,” “L’Amour Fou” and the recent “Gang of Four.”

But “Out One: Spectre” is the fullest, richest version and the most daringly executed. The wonderful cast--Michel Lonsdale as the corrupt theatrical mentor, Jean-Pierre Leaud as an obsessed amateur detective, Juliet Berto as his sister, Eric Rohmer as a Balzac expert and Bulle Ogier and Bernadette Lafont among those caught up in their intrigues--seem to be making up their parts on the fly. It’s as if two Rivette models, the open and free Roberto Rossellini and Fritz Lang, architect of geometric nightmares, had collaborated on an endless soap opera, then condensed it into a mini-epic of fear, art, loathing and desire.

Robert Bresson’s superb “The Devil, Probably” is one of his few entirely original films and perhaps his definitive statement on modern life, inspiring the late Richard Roud to write : “When a civilization can produce a work of art as perfectly achieved as this, it is hard to believe there is no hope for it.” As usual, Bresson views spirituality through characters who are struggling with faith or have lost it completely. While delivering a powerful indictment of the plagues of today--including worldwide pollution and the spiritual malaise of the young--he focuses on a group of young leftist intellectuals, one of whom is drifting toward suicide. The title refers to a comment by a bus kibitzer explaining who really runs the world: “The devil, probably,” he suggests, coolly.

Again as usual, Bresson shoots with almost ascetic methods: no music, minimal expression from his actors, a camera that often seems to stare deferentially toward the floor and a sound track hypersensitive to background noise. Casual viewers find the film empty, but Bresson is a true genius of the cinema. His style has the simple perfection and power of a Bach partita.

Experimentalism, though, is not always a bed of roses, or even beautiful thorns. On Sunday, actor Jean Louis Trintignant’s directorial debut, “The Lifeguard,” is paired with the unpromising Tchalgadjieff-produced first feature of cubist painter Charles Matton. His “The Italian of the Roses” plays like a mixture of “14 Hours” with bad Fellini imitations and rip-offs of “The Graduate.” On top of a huge Parisian apartment block, a distraught Italian pop composer (Richard Bohringer), driven mad by the world’s Philistinism and discourtesy, tries to decide whether to jump, while his memories are haunted by flashbacks of stressful confrontations in the zoo and on TV quiz programs, and a rowdy wedding party carouses callously below. The best performances in “Roses” are delivered by a young couple in a nearby room who sleep through most of the movie--which seems a rational response.

Noel Coward and David Lean were one of the British cinema’s great odd couples of the ‘40s. The tart, flamboyant playwright-actor and the quietly brilliant director collaborated on four classics, Lean beginning as Coward’s co-director on the sea-going flag-waver “In Which We Serve,” getting directorial reins firmly in hand by the end of the film and never relinquishing them.

Their four movies, which lead off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Lean retrospective, include “In Which We Serve” (1942) and “Brief Encounter” (1945) on Friday and “This Happy Breed” (1944), another WWII spirit-raiser, and the spectral sex comedy “Blithe Spirit” (with Margaret Rutherford’s sublimely dotty medium Madame Arcati) on Saturday. Of the four, “Brief Encounter” is the finest: a poignant tale of repressed extramarital romance between hapless Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, which clearly predates the sexual revolution. It proves, quietly, unforgettably, that our greatest loves are often the ones never realized.

Information: (213) 857-6010.