‘Fractured Visions’ Shows Flowing Nature of Rayher

A retrospective of the work of experimentalist Robert Rayher will be presented tonight at 8 by Filmforum at LACE. “Fractured Visions/Reflected Light: Robert Rayher” is an apt program title describing Rayher’s flowing, lyrical images, many of which are natural landscapes reprocessed in various ways.

Rayher has said that among his key influences have been filmmakers Stan Brakhage and composer John Cage. The Super 8 shorts, which open the program, recall Brakhage’s sun-through-leafy-bough celebrations of nature.

In “Eclipsed” (1985) and the rest of the offerings, Rayher emerges as very much his own man. “Eclipsed” offers a sensual counterplay between color and music; “Oubli” (1980) is a sinuous, bold dance film, and “Not Death by Water, Baptism by Fire” (1989) is a curious, ritualized interplay of film noir imagery and dance.

By far, the most accessible and satisfying work is “Leavings” (1991), a memorial to Rayher’s father in which wilderness landscapes and the occasional family photo are accompanied by Rayher’s narrative, accompanied sparely by a wheezy organ (probably the very instrument long in his family’s possession). Rayher’s dry, detached tone of voice undercuts sentimentality while making “Leavings” a most affecting experience.

Information: (213) 663-9568.

Griffith Revelations: The Silent Movie, now marking its 50th anniversary, will present one of its major offerings Wednesday only at 8 p.m., with D. W. Griffith’s rarely shown “The Sorrows of Satan” (1926).

Such late Griffith films are often fascinating as revelations of his conflicted Victorian-era sensibility. Surely, he must have identified with his hero, a near-starving writer (Ricardo Cortez) driven to cursing God in his despairing exclamation that “only money counts.”

Cortez is tempted by seductive White Russian princess (Hungarian star Lya de Putti, fresh from her triumph in E. A. Dupont’s “Variety”) but finally craving the redemptive love of a demure, waif-like good woman (Carol Dempster), a fellow struggling writer, who lives across the hall from him in a London rooming house. When Cortez utters his curse, he receives a mysterious visitor whom we recognize as Satan in the debonair form of a subtle, wise, world-weary Adolphe Menjou.

The eternal struggle between the flesh and the spirit, art and commerce, charge “Sorrows of Satan,” which was based on English novelist Marie Corelli’s 1895 record-setting best seller. An example of studio production design at its grandest, it even boasts a couple of De Mille-like bacchanals--De Mille, in fact, had hoped to direct the film himself.

Despite much studio interference, “The Sorrows of Satan” reveals Griffith in full command of the medium that he, more than anyone else, demonstrated to be an art form; the play of light and shadow is inspired and stunning; the use of the camera, at once fresh, timeless and inventive. There is so little miming and so much normal conversation, rendered very sparingly in intertitles, that “Sorrows of Satan” actually seems to be anticipating the advent of sound.

Dempster, Griffith’s lovely, often-maligned protegee, is luminous, and Cortez, Valentino’s key successor as a smoldering screen lover, is equally fine. There will be selected shorts and live organ accompaniment by Dean Mora.

Information: (213) 653-2389.