Series to Honor Studio Craftsman Vincent Sherman

The American Cinematheque’s “Contract Man: A Tribute to Vincent Sherman” calls long-overdue attention to one of Hollywood’s finest studio craftsmen just as he’s published his candid and illuminating autobiography, “Studio Affairs: My Life as a Film Director.”

The series starts Friday at Raleigh Studios at 7 p.m. with “The Hard Way” (1942), which Sherman considers his most personal film.

It’s a cautionary tale, adapted by Daniel Fuchs and Peter Viertel from an Irwin Shaw story, about the perils of ruthless ambition--and inspired in part by Ginger Rogers, her ambitious mother Lela and Rogers’ first husband, fading vaudevillian Jack Pepper. (Rogers turned the role down, admitting, “That could be my life.”)

Ida Lupino stars a young woman who, having failed in her own attempt to escape a dreary Pennsylvania mining town, uses her pretty younger sister (Joan Leslie), who has minor singing and dancing ability, to get them both out by encouraging the 18-year-old Leslie to marry a sweet-natured, naive song-and-dance man (Jack Carson) whose shrewd, handsome partner (Dennis Morgan) has Lupino’s number from the start.

“The Hard Way” is in the best Warners tradition: brisk, punchy and tough-minded. And Sherman brought to Shaw’s story an extra dimension of humanity while eliciting four really remarkable portrayals.

Sherman, 90, will appear after the screening of “The Hard Way” and before the 9:30 p.m. screening of the original full-length (2 hours, 26 minutes) version of “Mr. Skeffington” (1944), one of several pictures he made with Bette Davis that constitute some of her best work.

Here, she gives a full-fledged portrait of a New York society belle who in 1914 marries a Jewish banker (Claude Rains, sympathetic and dignified) from whom her wastrel brother (Richard Waring) has embezzled $24,000--a not inconsiderable amount of money at the time.

The marriage begins cordially enough, but when it founders, this vain, vapid, self-absorbed woman becomes consumed with holding onto her youth with increasingly grotesque consequences. Written by Philip and Julius Epstein, this high melodrama is the vintage women’s picture at its most polished and potent, and under Sherman’s firm guidance Davis makes a silly woman seem incredibly moving.

For full schedule: (213) 466-FILM.

Exploitation Efforts: The Nuart’s “Grindhouse” series of vintage exploitation pictures starts Friday at 7:30 p.m. with Byron Mabe’s “She Freak,” a surprisingly competent adaptation of Tod Browning’s classic “Freaks” (1967) that in its carnival background offers an authentic slice of Americana.

Co-producer David E. Friedman will appear.

For full schedule: (310) 478-6379.

More From Von Trier: Now that Lars von Trier’s tempestuous “Breaking the Waves” is causing such a stir, Filmforum is presenting at the Goethe Institute at 7 p.m. Sunday his superb 1988 “Medea,” which he shot from a script by Carl Dreyer and Preben Thomsen that Dreyer never got to film himself.

Explaining in a written monologue that his intent was to honor rather than to try to emulate his fellow Dane, Von Trier creates a starkly stylish film that is one of the finest film renderings ever of a Greek tragedy.

It is a remarkably controlled film for the passionate, heady Von Trier, and in Kirsten Olesen he has a sensual, fiercely proud and utterly implacable Medea and an equally fine reason, a man of ruthless yet tormented ambition, in Udo Kier, for whom the film is surely his finest moment.

For once Kier gets to play a virile male in contrast to all the epicene decadents and evil types he’s played. He will appear in person.

Filmforum has moved its regular 7 p.m. screenings from LACE to the Goethe Institute, 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 110.

Information: (213) 466-4143.

At Sunset and Grande: The Sunset 5 is screening David Schrader’s amiable, amateurish comedy “NoHo,” about a couple of unemployed guys living in North Hollywood, Friday and Saturday at midnight.

Information: (213) 848-3500.

The Grande 4-Plex is presenting a one-week run of Chris Kraus’ tedious “Gravity and Grace,” a surreal look a two bored New Zealand college women.

Information: (213) 617-0268.