‘Bad People’ Takes a Fresh Look at the Philippines : Movies: Excesses of the Marcos era and what they reveal about the United States get a newsy, Godard-like treatment.

In “The Machine That Killed Bad People,” which screens today at 8 p.m. at the Mark Goodson Theater at the American Film Institute, video maker Steve Fagin makes a bold and largely successful attempt to appraise in a fresh, provocative way what has happened--and is happening--in the Philippines.

If you can imagine a TV newscast designed (and sent-up) by Jean-Luc Godard you will have a rough idea of what Fagin has tried to do. Some portions are straightforward interviews with activists of various loyalties and opinions, others offer glimpses of the inane and luxurious Marcos life style; commercials become political satire, while other sections are straight-out fantasy.

Although the two-hour video has its occasional tedious stretches, it by and large offers a most effective approach, at once revealing and challenging, in trying to get a purchase on the absurdities and excesses of the Marcos era and what they reveal about the United States and our government, which condoned them for so long.

Indeed, Fagin is really considering the history of the country in the light of American colonialism and cultural imperialism and is also exploring the role of TV itself in creating political myths that determine the course of entire societies. “The Machine That Killed Bad People” is tantalizing, thoughtful sometimes obscure and often very funny. Fagin will be present. For reservations, which are advised: (213) 856-7771.

The UCLA Film Archives’ “The Dawn of Sound: A Tribute to Vitaphone” continues Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with “Noah’s Ark,” a stupendous 1929 biblical spectacle that the archive’s preservation expert Robert Gitt spent a year restoring with financial assistance from AT&T; and Turner Entertainment. Written by Darryl Zanuck and directed by Michael Curtiz, it is like Curtiz’s earlier “Sodom and Gomorrah” and the De Mille biblicals that combine modern and ancient stories.

In this instance, Zanuck draws a dubious yet potent parallel between the moral cleansing power of the Great Flood and the Great War. The amazing opening, which intercuts past and present before settling down to tell a love story at the outbreak of World War I, is surpassed only by the concluding flood sequences, which are awe-inspiring in their power and realism. (Master cinematographer Hal Mohr quit as a protest over their danger, and several extras reportedly did lose their lives during filming.) As kitschy as “Sodom and Gomorrah” is, it did show Curtiz, the later director of “Casablanca” and many other Warner classics, to have a tremendous grasp of the cinematic on an epic scale.

“Noah’s Ark,” in most every way superior to “Sodom and Gomorrah,” exudes energy and is free from the sanctimoniousness of the De Mille biblicals. Dolores Costello and George O’Brien are exceptionally attractive star-crossed lovers, a German and an American, who fall in love and marry only to have their happiness destroyed by the advent of war.

Just as their story reaches its darkest climactic moment, we’re moved back in time where the stars play equally ill-fated lovers in the city of Akkad in the land of Ur, which is so oppressive and decadent that Noah (Paul McAllister), at God’s direction, starts building his ark. Louis Silvers, conductor of the Vitaphone Symphony Orchestra, composed a suitably melodramatic score, heard throughout the film, which is a part-talkie.

The very self-conscious talking sequences slow down the pace considerably, and the film offers a graphic demonstration of how cast and crew had to make abrupt shifts in style between the two distinct mediums; however, every key figure on either side of the camera was to make his or her mark in the sound era. “Noah’s Ark” will be followed by another UCLA restoration, Curtiz’s 1930 “Under a Texas Moon,” the first sound Western in Technicolor.

Sunday brings at 2 p.m. “The Broadway Melody” (1929), the first “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” musical, plus a great rarity, also restored by UCLA, Alan Crosland’s “Viennese Nights” (1930), a schmaltzy but charming Sigmund Romburg-Oscar Hammerstein Technicolor operetta with Vivienne Segal, Alexander Gray and a dashing Walter Pidgeon. The Sunday evening double feature is Howard Hawks’ first talkie “The Dawn Patrol” (1930) and Mervyn LeRoy’s landmark “Little Caesar” (1930).