Love Conquers All in 1928 Gaynor Classic ‘Street Angel’

When Janet Gaynor was awarded the very first best-actress Oscar in 1928, it was for her work in three films. The least frequently revived of the three is “Street Angel”--the other two being the landmark “Sunrise” and the phenomenally popular “Seventh Heaven.” “Street Angel,” which reteamed Gaynor with her “Seventh Heaven” co-star Charles Farrell and their director Frank Borzage, screens Friday and Saturday at the Silent Movie, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., along with one of Buster Keaton’s finest films, “The Navigator.”

To watch “Street Angel” today is to realize that as an extravagant tear-jerker it could never be made now. Nevertheless it remains deeply moving, thanks to its stars and especially Frank Borzage. There probably never has been a more romantic director than Borzage, whose films were mostly love stories. He had a sincerity coupled with a genuinely poetic expressiveness that has enabled his work to transcend its sentimentality.

The tall, handsome Farrell plays a struggling Neapolitan painter who finds his inspiration in the diminutive, waif-like Gaynor. Inevitably, an unjust incident in Gaynor’s past will catch up with them. At this point the film should actually end, but Borzage works his way valiantly toward a celebration of the redemptive power of love. It says a great deal for Borzage’s skill--and that of Farrell’s as well--that the painter comes across as innocent in the throes of love rather than a narrow-minded prig. “Street Angel” is also a triumph of expressionistic art direction and luminous cinematography. Information: (213) 653-2389.

Among the films and videos being screened in the opening weekend of the annual Asian Pacific International Film Festival at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater are Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s brand-new, 30-minute “A History of Clouds” and their 25-minute 1986 “Kappa,” which will be presented Sunday at 7:30 p.m.

Their beautiful, informative and amazingly comprehensive “A History of Clouds” is just that: a survey of how clouds have been depicted in art and photography over the centuries. We learn the differences between Edward Weston and Ansel Adams as photographers of clouds, and we meet artist Gary Lloyd, whose company supplies meticulously authentic painted backdrops for films and TV.

A kappa is a mythological Japanese creature who at times sexually assaults maidens and yearns to become part of human society. To Norman Yonemoto the kappa in Japan functions like Freudian theory in the West. In their droll retelling, which incorporates animation and other art forms, the Yonemotos set “Oedipus Rex” in a swanky Trousdale-like estate with Mary Woronov as a lounging, poolside Jocasta and Eddie Ruscha as a California golden boy Oedipus while a kappa (a green-painted Mike Kelley, who collaborated on the script) lurks in the shrubs. The result is a totally unique, zany, funny yet provocative work. Information: (213) 206-FILM, (213) 206-8013.