Orchestra Adds Sounds to Silent ‘Pandora’s Box’

Many cineastes agree that the most fatale of all screen femmes is Louise Brooks’ Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s great 1928 silent “Pandora’s Box,” which will screen Friday through Sunday at the Nuart.

It will be accompanied by San Francisco’s ever-adventurous Club Foot Orchestra, which will perform its stunning original new score.

A figure of incandescent, willful amorality with a dazzling, irresistible smile, Brooks’ Lulu--a free-spirited Berlin dancer--is a thoughtless, ultimately naive destroyer of men, in particular, Fritz Kortner’s imposing newspaper magnate and his dashing young son (Francis Lederer, who will attend the Friday screening). She also, by the way, captivates the screen’s first explicit lesbian (played by Alice Roberts, as an aristocratic costume designer).

As stylized as the film itself, the Club Foot’s score evokes--but does not imitate--the jerky, frenetic music of Kurt Weill. It not only captures Lulu’s restless spirit and her quicksilver mood changes but also enhances our sense that “Pandora’s Box” reflects the ultra-sophisticated, desperate gaiety of the late Weimar Republic society reeling out of control, heading toward the Nazi disaster. Once again, Club Foot has brought fresh life to a silent classic.

Information: (310) 478-6379.

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Ironically, Pabst and Brooks’ next collaboration, the similar and striking “Diary of a Lost Girl” (1929) also screens Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Silent Movie, with live organ accompaniment.

Information: (213) 653-2389.

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Czech Love: Written by Jan Prochazka and directed by Karel Kachyna, “The Cow” (at the Sunset 5 Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.) is a beautiful, poignant and altogether captivating Czech love story set in a rugged turn-of-the-century mountain community.

The love between Adam (Radek Holub) and Rosa (Alena Mihulova) commences in psychologically valid violence: Adam, the bastard son of the just-deceased local prostitute, who adored his reviled mother, vehemently tries to reject Rosa, for she too is a prostitute and therefore too vivid a reminder of both his great loss and lowly status.

But Rosa, who sees Adam as her chance for salvation, persists until his rage gives way to tenderness. We soon care for these two so much that their story becomes suspenseful: Will they make it in the face of community contempt, the hard life of the peasant and simple fate? The film’s title refers to nature and its gift of sustenance.

Information: (213) 848-3500.

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Power in Hatred: It’s hard to believe, but four-time Oscar-winning documentary maker Charles Guggenheim has managed to make, in the 1990s, the often impressive 40-minute “The Shadow of Hate,” bearing the comprehensive subtitle, “A History of Intolerance in America” and exclude homophobia entirely.

Working with an inspired interplay between words and archival images, Guggenheim reminds us that extreme intolerance dates to Colonial times (when Quakers and Baptists were the victims).

Although he doesn’t deal with the crucial role of economics in intolerance, Guggenheim illuminates in powerful, concise fashion hatred directed toward a wide range of minorities over the centuries.

“The Shadow of Hate” will screen at 4:30 p.m. for one week at the Monica 4-Plex starting Friday, with Guggenheim’s sentimental, nostalgic hourlong “Clear Pictures: Reynolds Price,” which beautifully evokes writer-teacher Price’s idyllic Southern childhood, his love for his parents, his budding career--Eudora Welty and Stephen Spender were his early mentors--and his coming to terms with the crippling effects of surgery for a malignant tumor on his spine.

Guggenheim’s two key techniques, avoiding lengthy talking-head sequences via voice-overs, and artfully panning still photos to bring them to life, is in full, effective play in both films. But just as Guggenheim overlooks gays and lesbians in the first film, he gives us not a clue as to Price’s personal life or, for that matter, to his critical reputation.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

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Worth Noting: The Godard and Visconti series continue at L.A. County Museum of Art with “Contempt” (1963) and “Les Carabiniers” (1963) Friday at 1 and 8 p.m. and with “Rocco and His Brothers” (1960) Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

All three are major works by two great filmmakers.

Information: (213) 857-6010.