Ripstein’s ‘Limits’ Highlights Showcase of Mexican Films

Among the films screening this weekend in the UCLA Film Archive’s comprehensive “Mexican Film and the Literary Tradition” is Arturo Ripstein’s Tennessee Williams-like 1977 “The Place Without Limits” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz Theater). This attack on oh-so-easily threatened machismo stars the remarkable Roberto Cobo as a giddy but courageous drag queen and proprietor of a small-town bordello. Cobo creates a figure of disturbing sexual ambiguity, effeminate in men’s clothes but masculine in ruffled flamenco gowns that emphasize his wiry athlete’s physique. The second feature is Sergio Olhovich’s 1975 “The Coronation,” starring Ernesto Alonso. Screening Sunday at 7:30 p.m. is Emilio Fernandez’s 1945 classic “The Pearl” and Ruben Gamez’s “The Secret Formula.”

Information: (310) 206-FILM, (310) 206-8013.

Silent Duo: Screening at the Silent Movie on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. is “Seventh Heaven” (1927), the most famous of Frank Borzage’s films of spiritual redemption through love. It features one of the cinema’s most celebrated romantic teams, Janet Gaynor (as the petite Parisian street waif Diane) and Charles Farrell (as the handsome sewer worker Chico). Playing with it is “Wild Orchids” (1929), a familiar tale of how a young wife (Greta Garbo) with a much older husband (Lewis Stone) struggles against her attraction to an exotic prince (Nils Asther), a determined seducer whom she meets while on a sojourn in Java. This is a perfect example of how Garbo, beyond her incomparable radiance, could find and express an emotional truth in her heroines, now matter how contrived their predicaments, thereby transmuting dross into gold.

Information: (213) 653-2389.

McBain by Kurosawa: “High and Low” (at the Monica 4-Plex Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m.) is Akira Kurosawa’s darkly dazzling reworking of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct mystery “King’s Ransom.” Toshiro Mifune stars as a Yokohoma shoe manufacturer who has just arranged a 50-million-yen loan to gain control of his corporation when a kidnaper (Tsutomu Yamazaki) demands that very sum in ransom for the return of the son of Mifune’s chauffeur, mistakenly taken in place of Mifune’s own son. “High and Low” at once explores Mifune’s moral dilemma while taking us on a tour of the sleazy side of Yokohama in pursuit of the kidnaper. Tense, stylish and thoughtful.

Information: (213) 394-9741.