Cinematheque Spotlights Postwar French Films

The American Cinematheque’s “Postwar French Films: Cahiers du Cinema Showcase,” a dozen films presented in association with the influential French film journal (and also the French Cultural Services), begins Wednesday at the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd., at 7 p.m. with the only new picture in the series, Olivier Assayas’ “Paris Is Awakening.” This will be followed at 8:45 by Jean Renoir’s 1955 “French Can-Can.”

Assayas’ film is a stylish, quietly affecting portrait of a beautiful 18-year-old named Louise (Judith Godreche) trying to make her way in the present-day City of Lights. With little education, a recurrent drug problem and not much more than vague ambition, she is vulnerable to men unworthy of her love: first, a middle-aged tour guide (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who rages at her incessantly--and perversely--out of fear that she doesn’t truly love him; second, his long-absent 19-year-old son (Thomas Langmann), a drifter who seems headed for trouble. Louise’s ultimate fate is doubly ironic: She winds up with far more professional success than she probably could have ever realistically expected, yet that fate is prosaic and trivial alongside her dreams.

The other 11 films in the series, which continues Saturday and concludes Tuesday, represent venturesome, wide-ranging selections. Every one is well worth seeing, most rarely surface and several are musts for cineastes.

At the top of the list is Jacques Rivette’s highly demanding 1960 “Paris Belongs to Us” (Friday at 7 p.m., followed by Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” and Godard’s “Breathless”) in which he attempts no less than to show the effect of the fear of totalitarianism and the threat of nuclear warfare on the minds of young people. He also tells the story of a pretty girl (Betty Schneider) coming of age--of learning that Paris belongs to no one. Playing an actress rehearsing for a production of Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” Schneider is searching for some tape recordings of a Spanish guitarist who has just died under mysterious circumstances; her director wants them for incidental music.

The film has the form of a detective thriller in which Rivette gives us no clues and forces us to focus on his characters and to see in them the same fears that affect everyone. What makes this film, which captures the hot and dirty city of students and intellectuals, so difficult (yet worth the effort) is the combination of Rivette’s reticent style with the immensity of his theme.

Max Ophuls’ 1955 “Lola Montes” (screening Thursday at 8:45 p.m. following the 7 p.m. screening of Claude Chabrol’s bleakly powerful 1959 debut film “Le Beau Serge”) is a classic example of a triumph of form over content. The film was supposed to have been a “Forever Amber”-type entertainment, complete with Cinemascope, based on a best-selling fictionalized account of Montes’ tempestuous life and starring Martine Carol, known more for her glamour than her acting ability.

Ophuls, nevertheless, transformed this boudoir tale into a dazzling evocation of a vanished age with its richly romantic spirit and equally unflagging hypocrisy, epitomized by the fate of the fabulous Lola, an Irish-born “Spanish” dancer and courtesan who at one point is holed up in a Grass Valley cabin scheming to become Queen of California.

Although Montes never appeared in a circus, Ophuls decided to introduce her as the chief attraction of an incredibly opulent one playing New Orleans. Deathly ill, she nevertheless acts out her own life in a series of tableaux, answering questions about her notorious past and even performing acrobatic feats, climaxing in a high dive symbolic of her fall from her position as mistress to Ludwig I of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook)--all this to the crack of ringmaster Peter Ustinov’s whip.

Throughout, there is a witty and ironic contrast between Ustinov’s sensational narration of her life and the film’s flashbacks. It is a tribute to Ophuls’ genius that he is ultimately able to move us by his feelings for his often-wronged heroine, which extends to his compassion for the hapless, wooden Carol herself. Carol aside, everything else is perfection.

Saturday: Eric Rohmer’s 1971 “Claire’s Knee” (at 3 p.m.), Jean Eustache’s 1973 “The Mother and the Whore” (at 5 p.m.); Jacques Doillon’s 1979 “The Crying Woman” (at 9 p.m.); Tuesday: Jacques Demy’s 1961 “Lola” (at 7 p.m.) and Andre Techine’s 1986 “The Scene of the Crime” (at 8:45 p.m.). Among these, the Eustache and Demy films are the most distinctive.

Information: (213) 466-FILM.