Don Ameche Tribute Gives a Glimpse of a Golden Era

Among the 10 films screening as part of the American Cinematheque’s “A Weekend With Don Ameche,” to be held this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Directors Guild, are “Down Argentine Way” (1940) and “Moon Over Miami” (1941).

The durable, debonair Ameche has made more important films--Lubitsch’s superb “Heaven Can Wait” (1943) and Mitchell Leisen’s witty, sophisticated “Midnight” (1939), for example--but few were more popular than these two Fox musicals, screening Friday at 9 p.m. They are examples of the Golden Era Hollywood dream machine working in full force.

Shot in gorgeous pastel Technicolor amid sleek, opulent settings, they are populated with attractive, smartly dressed people who periodically break into song and dance. Although so reflective of their era that they belong in a time capsule, they seem today delightful period pieces rather than merely dated (or campy). They were designed purely as escapist entertainment, and at that they still succeed amazingly well.

Both team the top-billed Ameche with Betty Grable, and they launched her to superstardom. Ameche--with his confident, relaxed masculinity, dark good looks and resonant singing voice (which he retains to this day)--is a perfect foil for Grable’s spunky, apple-cheeked, All-American blondness. If Grable, with her World War II pinup-queen legs and figure, defined popular taste in the ‘40s, Ameche, in contrast, remains timeless.

“Down Argentine Way,” directed briskly by Irving Cummings, finds horse-loving heiress Grable falling for rich Argentine horse breeder Ameche; the primary complication in this breezy but engaging trifle is that Ameche’s proud father (Henry Stephenson) is still bitter over losing a girl to Grable’s father when they were both students in Paris long ago. Along for the fun is Charlotte Greenwood, veteran Broadway singing and dancing comedienne famed for her high kicks, as Grable’s acerbic aunt.

If “Moon Over Miami,” which re-teamed Ameche, Grable and Greenwood under Walter Lang’s direction, is at times talky, it has an unexpected poignance. Grable plays a Texas carhop who, upon receiving a small inheritance, persuades her aunt (Greenwood) and sister (Carole Landis) to head for Miami to help her land a rich husband. Posing as an heiress, Grable pursues Ameche only to learn his family fortune has evaporated--after she has fallen for him.

Information: (213) 466-FILM.

Japanese Films: The UCLA Film Archive’s “Young Japanese Cinema” continues this weekend in Melnitz Theater with Naoto Yamakawa’s 1986 “The New Morning of Billy the Kid” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) and Go Takamine’s 1985 “Paradise View” (Sunday at 7:30 p.m.), plus various shorts.

The first film finds Billy the Kid (Hiroshi Mikami) entering a Monument Valley saloon to try to get a job as a bouncer only to be plunged into a surreal world in which the saloon’s denizens emerge as figures of popular mythology, both Eastern and Western.

The idea seems to be that their impact upon each other will result in a new, synthesized culture. With its claustrophobic single set, “The New Morning of Billy the Kid” plays like a filmed play, and it contains more references, nuances and notions than it is possible for subtitles to translate.

“Paradise View” is far more impressive, remarkable even, yet scarcely less accessible with its total absence of exposition. As an Okinawan film, set in 1970, it evokes an ancient native culture that has its own beliefs and rituals that have been oppressed by the Japanese, who annexed the island nation in 1879 and regained control over it from the United States in 1972.

Its key setting is a lush rural community that proves to be no paradise for its citizens, who have little to occupy their time besides gossip. The key figure is Reishu Goya (Kaoru Kobayashi), a musician now unemployed after losing his job on a U.S. base, and the crux of the matter is that he and a local girl, Nabee (Tamao Koike), have been lovers, resulting in her pregnancy, which in turn jeopardizes her engagement, much-desired by her mother, to a visiting Japanese botanist.

Whereas “The New Morning of Billy the Kid” is so static as to become a turnoff, “Paradise View” is well worth the effort.

Information: (213) 206-FILM, (213) 206-8013.