Lighthearted ‘Club’ Due at Silent Movie

Following the 8 p.m. screenings tonight and Saturday at the Silent Movie, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., of “The Freshman,” one of Harold Lloyd’s major works, is another 1925 comedy, “The Night Club,” as obscure as the Lloyd film is famous.

Adapted from a 1913 play written by Cecil B. DeMille and his writer-director brother William, the film takes its title from a group of confirmed New York bachelors. “The Night Club’s” hero (Raymond Griffith) becomes a charter member when he is jilted at the altar. Further repulsed when he learns that he can inherit $1 million only if he marries a certain young society woman (Vera Reynolds), Griffith and his valet (William Austin) head for an unnamed Latin country that seems lots like Mexico. You scarcely need a crystal ball to guess that Griffith will soon cross paths with Reynolds.

“The Night Club” is by no means a silent comedy classic yet but is typical of the era’s unpretentious, lighthearted fare, which has an enduring charm and ability to make us laugh. Under Frank Urson’s casual direction, the film rambles but is filled with good-natured slapstick. Although largely unknown today, Griffith was a director for Mack Sennett in the teens and became a star in the ‘20s. Short and dapper, he had a sophisticated way with a double-take and has aptly been compared with France’s urbane Max Linder. Also along for the fun are Wallace Beery and Louise Fazenda. Information: (213) 653-2389.

“Highway Patrolman” (1991) sounds like a TV series but is actually one of the many exciting offerings in the UCLA Film Archive’s Contemporary Mexican Cinema. It screens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater and will be followed by “Lola” (1990), the first feature of Maria Novaro, the director of the recent “Danzon.”

Surprisingly, the Spanish-language “Highway Patrolman” was directed by Alex Cox, and it is by far his best film since his wry, surreal comedy “Repo Man.” Working with Lorenzo O’Brien’s solid script, a classic social conscience drama, Cox has turned out a taut, tough-minded and thoroughly absorbing commentary on present-day Mexican society.

A highway patrolman is an ideal profession for Cox’s hero (Roberto Sosa), for un patrullero is constantly confronted with all the ills that beset Mexico (and most other countries as well): poverty, injustice, hardship, drug-trafficking and widespread corruption.

Ripe for quickly being drawn and quartered, Sosa’s patrolman is a naive idealist faced immediately with both tempting bribes and having quotas to meet. Slight and ordinary-looking, the unprepossessing Sosa (who also has a key role in “Lola”) proves to be an actor of limitless reserves, making us care very much about the patrolman’s fate: How will he manage to survive both the dangers and the brutal physical and psychic demands of his grueling, virtually impossible job? It’s a question one might well ask about any decent, dedicated U.S. law enforcement officer.

As with his writer-producer, Cox is also well served by his cinematographer, Miguel Garzon, whose mobile camera captures both the gritty harshness of the patrolman’s restless existence and the rugged beauty of the landscape of Durango, the film’s principal locale. Impassioned and overflowing with acutely observed individuals, “Highway Patrolman” is painfully, vibrantly alive.

Maria Novaro’s “Danzon” and “Lola” both deal with single women, each of whom has a daughter; also both undergo a process of self-discovery. Beyond this--and Novaro’s assured, natural affinity for storytelling with a camera--the two films are so different in tone as to be the obverse of each other (which is why they would make a terrific double feature). Whereas “Danzon” is a warm and exhilarating romantic comedy, “Lola” is a serious study of an impoverished young woman (Leticia Huijara) who sporadically supports herself as a street vendor and who is drifting into despair to the extent that she dumps her small daughter on her own mother.

Novaro, who wrote the film with her sister Beatriz, uses repeated images of buildings destroyed in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake to mirror Huijara’s desperate situation and state of mind. Even so, “Lola” is as affirmative as “Danzon” is in its faith in women learning to take charge of their own destinies. Information: (310) 206-FILM.