Intriguing ‘Kaspar Hauser’ to Kick Off German Film Series

The American Cinematheque’s “New Films From Germany” gets off to a sensational start Friday at 7 p.m. at the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd., with Peter Sehr’s amazing “Kaspar Hauser.”

Sehr argues persuasively that the young man who turned up on a Nuremberg street in 1828 after 12 years in a castle dungeon was in fact the Crown Prince of Baden, the victim of ruthless palace intrigue involving the power struggles between duchies of Baden and Bavaria, intensified by Napoleon’s eagerness to put his relatives on every throne.

At once a political thriller, an outrageous satire on corrupt royal shenanigans and an ironic fable about a profoundly ill-fated young man of innocence and brilliance who is given back his life only to have it taken away again (played superbly by Andre Eisermann), “Kaspar Hauser” is a tour de force of wit, originality and poignancy.

It will be repeated Sunday at 5:45 p.m., followed by a discussion with the director.

Another winner in the eight-film weekend series is Sonke Wortmann’s giddy, earthy romantic comedy “Pretty Baby” (Saturday at 8:30 p.m.), in which a womanizing would-be photographer (Til Schweiger), thrown out by his fed-up girlfriend (“Makin’ Up’s” Katja Riemann), is given shelter by a kindly gay man (Joachim Krol), who swiftly falls for this amiable hunk--and wonders if he dare make a pass at him.

Affectionate and hilarious, the film wonders whether a straight man and a gay man might be friends and even, possibly, lovers, calling into question, ultimately the whole notion of rigid sexual orientation. In its good-natured, uproarious way it is honest about the profound attraction straight men can have for gays and how women tend to be far more threatened by the possibility that their lover may be two-timing them with another man than with another woman.

Information: (213) 466-FILM.

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Sioux on Horseback: Robert Clapsadle’s disappointing “The Ride to Wounded Knee” (in an open run Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. at the Sunset 5) marks the two-week Bigfoot Memorial Rides, held between 1986 and 1990, in which hundreds of Lakota Sioux embarked on a 250-mile horseback trek in subzero weather, tracing their people’s futile retreat from the U.S. Cavalry, which in December, 1890, massacred 300 unarmed Native Americans.

Clapsadle takes an ambitious impressionistic approach, melding archival materials, talking heads, gorgeous images of wintry Dakota landscapes, glimpses of the memorial riders on the road and in ceremonies, and generous clips from silent Westerns, to create a film that is often visually impressive.

Unfortunately, its narrative line is often so vague and meandering, an effect not helped by flat, monotonous off-screen narration, that “The Ride to Wounded Knee” doesn’t come into focus until the evocation of the massacre itself, which has a riveting quality otherwise sadly lacking.

Watching the film would have been a far less distracting experience had Clapsadle identified the sources of his film clips--drawn from, among others, the films of D.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, John Ford and Buster Keaton, no less--and had he named his interviewees instead of merely listing them in the end credits.

When a speaker is as eloquent as Lakota elder Celane Not Help Him in recalling her grandfather’s account of the massacre, you want to know who she is while you’re listening to her.

Information: (213) 848-3500.

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Richness of Possibilities: French documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s tender, lyrical “In the Land of the Deaf” (at the Nuart Friday for one week) takes us into the world of the hearing impaired, showing its richness of possibilities and the warmth of its community, and above all, celebrating the beauty and expressiveness of sign language.

Although it introduces us to hearing impaired individuals of all ages, it spends too much of its time with adorable small children and their infinitely patient, loving and dedicated teachers.

To be sure, several deaf adults reveal past horrors overcome and a sense of isolation endured, but Philibert is so determinedly affirmative that he skirts dealing with the strain of everyday life in a household where one of its members is severely hearing impaired.

More important, he fails to suggest that unless such an individual accepts him or herself, he or she will always view a hearing loss as a handicap--a handicap with the potential for both destruction of self and of family life.

Information: (310) 478-6379.