SCREENING ROOM : ‘Naked Man’ Looks at the Role of the Artist

“The Films of Konrad Wolf,” one of the year’s most rewarding retrospectives, continues today at the Goethe Institute, 5700 Wilshire Blvd., with “The Naked Man on the Playing Field” (1974), which on a less epic scale than Wolf’s “Goya” explores the role of the artist in society and also makes a plea for the artist’s freedom of expression.

The film, written by Wolfgang Kohlhasse, takes a droll, indirect approach to these questions and emphatically presents its hero, sculptor Kemmel (Kurt Bowe), as a burly, middle-aged, hard-working laborer rather than as an exotic type somehow elevated above the common man. Of course, Kemmel is not at all ordinary, and the film treats with wry humor his struggles to get his sometimes controversial work placed where he intended it.

The Wolf series concludes Thursday at 7 p.m. with “Solo Sunny” (1980), which brought its pretty, irresistibly impish star, Renate Krossner, the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for her portrayal of a scrappy aspiring pop singer of limited ability and a complicated love life.

The determined Sunny endures repeated assaults on her dignity as a member of an impoverished small touring revue in her struggle to escape her drab existence as a factory worker. “Sunny,” also written by Kohlhasse, is an affectionate, poignant portrait of a survivor, a woman who insists on living her life on her own terms.

Information: (213) 525-3388.