Swiss ‘Tosca’s Kiss’ Slated in UCLA’s ‘Portraits’ Series

As part of “Portraits of Aging in the Cinema,” a monthly series at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute Auditorium, Swiss film maker Daniel Schmid’s seldom-seen “Tosca’s Kiss” (1984) screens Wednesday at 7:15 p.m., followed by a discussion led by film critic Maria Elena de las Carreras.

Amusing, bracing and ineffably poignant, this wonderful film takes us inside Milan’s immense turn-of-the-century Casa Verdi, a legacy of the great composer constructed as a residence for retired singers, composers and opera singers. It is a film in which the past once more comes alive.

The great thing about these delightful, colorful people is that they still perform. They may have known when to retire from the stage, but they still enjoy their music among themselves. What’s astonishing is how beautiful so many of the voices of the opera singers remain. Take, for example, Sicilian-born diva Sara Scuderi, who defied her doctor’s orders to sing once again for this film. She acknowledges that she’s out of practice, she knows better than anyone else that her voice has faded, yet she still sounds glorious. Scuderi is frail but vivacious and acutely alert and witty, an elegant, discerning woman who must have been a great beauty and who has not lost any of her star quality. Without vanity--no, she won’t hide her cane for the camera, as a friend suggests; without false humility--”Bella, bella, bella,” she murmurs on listening to one of her own recordings, and without any pretensions, she effortlessly dominates every scene in which she appears.

The “Tosca’s kiss”--the kiss of death--that Scuderi bestows in a dramatic duet with the robust Leonida Bellon may be emblematic of the mortality that hovers over the entire film, yet its every scene overflows with a passionate love of life as well as of music.

Vittorio De Sica’s “Umberto D” (1952) screens April 25 and “Harold and Maude” (1971) screens May 9. For information, call John P. Brown at (213) 825-8255.

“The Wheel of Life,” a charming three-part Taiwanese fable involving reincarnation, screens tonight at 7 at USC’s Taper Hall 101 as the final offering in the International Film Club’s “Heart and Soul” series.

In the first part of the 1984 film, the beautiful and versatile Peng Hsueh-fen plays a high-born bride-to-be caught up in a rebellion against government corruption during the Ming Dynasty. In the second, she is the star of a Peking opera troupe in the early days of the Republic. In the last episode, she is a member of a modern-dance troupe playing a Taiwanese village, where primitive religious practices prevail.

Information: (213) 743-2666.

A call for liberation characterizes Marlon Riggs’ stunning and imaginative 55-minute “Tongues Untied” (1989), which screens Saturday at 7 p.m. and again at 9 at the Directors Guild. It’s part of a new gay and lesbian film series that continue every other month throughout the year.

Drawing from the poetry of Essex Hemphill and other poets and utilizing dance, tableaux and documentary footage, Riggs in “Tongues Untied” creates a stylized, sensual and impassioned stream-of-consciousness celebration of love between black men. Riggs, an Emmy Award winner, has created a film of extraordinary visual power and originality.

Information: (213) 650-5133.