Award Bash Kicks Off Palm Springs Film Festival : Movies: Career achievement honor goes to Frank Sinatra in star-studded highlight to the annual desert event.

“Frank . . . where are you? Come here, will you?” James Stewart said in his inimitable drawl.

Out came Frank Sinatra onto the ballroom stage at the Riviera Hotel on Saturday night to receive the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Career Achievement Award. Stewart, last year’s recipient, congratulated Sinatra “not just on your success but for all the joy you have given people.”

Sinatra, looking fit at 77 and visibly moved by the honor, was gracious in his thanks, adding: “I couldn’t have been luckier in my life, knowing people like Jimmy and Gene Kelly. There’s not much more I can say. Thank you all for coming.”

Sinatra’s appearance was preceded by an hourlong program, emceed by Robert Wagner and featuring a marvelous array of film clips selected impeccably by the program’s writer-producer-director, Paul Fagen. The clips attested to Sinatra’s formidable gifts as a dramatic actor as well as a star of musicals. There was Sinatra deprogramming a brainwashed Laurence Harvey in “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962), Sinatra uncomfortably trying to ditch Shirley MacLaine’s adorable floozy in “Some Came Running” (1959), and Sinatra in his unforgettable, timelessly heartbreaking death scene in “From Here to Eternity,” which brought him a best supporting actor Oscar.

The memorable musical moments were in no way slighted. There was Sinatra singing “The Lady Is a Tramp” to Rita Hayworth in “Pal Joey” (1957) and dancing with Gene Kelly in “Anchors Away” (1945).

George Sidney, who directed both films, recalled that one dancing number with Kelly required a whopping 102 takes because Sinatra wanted it just right. As for Sinatra’s reputation as a one-take actor, Sidney said, “His first is better than most people’s 10th. He always went for the best and took risks.”

The glittering, sold-out Sinatra tribute was the highlight of the opening weekend of the Film Festival’s fourth edition.

Despite a steady downpour on opening night Thursday, the festival drew to the landmark Plaza Theater a sell-out audience for New Zealand filmmaker Vincent Ward’s “Map of the Human Heart.” An audacious, intensely cinematic love story with settings stretching from the Arctic Circle to an astonishing re-creation of the bombing of Dresden, Ward’s film set the tone for the 10-day festival’s opening weekend as to both the level of the event’s artistic standards and the audience’s enthusiastic response.

A festival spokesperson reported that, by opening day, ticket sales were up 50% over the same time last year. Similarly, at the festival’s start, 275 tickets, each costing $200 and covering all events, had been sold, whereas only 100 had been sold by that time last year.

Even so, the festival’s founder, Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono, made a direct appeal in his opening night remarks for continuing support and admitted that the event is still “a tough go.” The festival staff has been cut from last year’s 30 to 19.

Featuring a closing weekend tribute to Marcello Mastroianni, Palm Springs is presenting, primarily at the Metropolitan Theater’s Courtyard 10, 89 films, composed of six world premieres, 16 North American premieres, 18 U.S. premieres and 15 Oscar submissions for best foreign film.

“My pride is in having a no-filler festival,” said artistic director Darryl Macdonald, who co-founded Seattle’s prestigious and influential film festival 18 years ago. “None of the films has been picked just to fill a slot or to appease somebody. The credibility of this festival is not just within the U.S. industry but the international industry as well, especially in Europe. Everybody everywhere has gotten picky. Let’s face it: Even Podunk has a film festival. But any festival that can have as bookends Frank Sinatra and Marcello Mastroianni has got to be a major success.”

The opening weekend’s screenings, both for the public and for the press, backed up Macdonald’s promise of a no-filler festival. Along with “Map of the Human Heart” (screening again at the Plaza on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.), which stars Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin and Jeanne Moreau, there were numerous other venturesome offerings.

Among them were Jean-Claude Lauzon’s “Leolo,” a brilliant, mystical and deeply disturbing fable about a young French-Canadian boy (Maxime Collin) staving off madness within his coarse blue-collar Montreal family by retreating to the world of his imagination (screening again tonight at 9 p.m. at the Plaza); Helmut Dietl’s “Schtonk!,” an outrageous satire of Hitler nostalgia (Saturday, 3:15 p.m., Courtyard 7) and Alex van Warmerdam’s “The Northerners,” a darkly absurdist tale of spiritual and sexual angst set in an isolated, unfinished Dutch housing project, circa 1960 (Thursday, 6 p.m., Plaza).

Among the American independents were Temistocles Lopez’s “Chain of Desire,” a compassionate, witty updating of “La Ronde” to the age of AIDS anxiety and starring, among others, Assumpta Serna, Seymour Cassel and Patrick Bauchau, and Jeffrey Reiner’s “Trouble Bound,” a derivative but clearly crowd-pleasing road movie starring “Reservoir Dogs’ ” Michael Madsen as an ex-con and Patricia Arquette as a madcap Mafia princess on the run. Seymour Cassel is in this one too, as the chief bad guy (tonight, 9:15 p.m., Courtyard 7).

Zhang Ymou, director of “Raise the Red Lantern” and “Ju Dou,” previous festival hits, is this year represented by the equally impressive “Story of Qiu Ju” (tonight, 6 p.m., Annenberg Theater, Desert Museum; Saturday, 6 p.m., Courtyard 3), in which his usual star, Gong Li, plays a Chinese peasant in a tenacious but ultimately ironic pursuit of justice.

Peter Gardos’ “The Scorpio Eats the Gemini for Breakfast” (Thursday, 3 p.m., Courtyard 3) is a giddy, bittersweet romantic comedy in which a young Hungarian cello teacher (Peter Rudolf) has his life turned upside down through a chance meeting with a skittish beauty (Eniko Eszenyi).

Festival information: (619) 778-8979.