An Exquisite ‘Butterfly’

Frederic Mitterrand’s transposing from stage to screen of Puccini’s beloved “Madame Butterfly” is so superbly cinematic, so emotionally devastating, that it’s stupefying it’s not receiving a regular run in Los Angeles--even with the prestigious “Martin Scorsese Presents” imprimatur.

Film and opera lovers will have to be content with seeing it 11 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays only at the Sunset 5, beginning this weekend. At least this is an ideal time slot for parents wishing to expose their older children to the glories of opera.

For his production, Mitterrand (nephew of the late French president) had an entire turn-of-the-century Japanese village impeccably re-created alongside a lake in Tunisia. He cast Ying Huang, an exquisite Shanghai soprano who is as gifted an actress as she is a singer, as the tragically naive 15-year-old geisha nicknamed Butterfly, born of a noble family dispossessed by the emperor.

Butterfly agrees to an arranged marriage with the handsome young American Lt. Pinkerton (Richard Troxell), a firm believer in having a girl in every port, only to fall in love with him at first sight.

Puccini was way ahead of his time in his respect and appreciation of Japanese culture, and in his criticism of blindly arrogant American condescension and racism and plain old hypocritical male chauvinism.

Equally well cast and a soaring tenor, Troxell suggests that, in his ignorance and selfishness, Pinkerton is in his way as naive as Butterfly. Ning Liang is Butterfly’s staunch servant Suzuki, and Richard Cowan is Nagasaki’s American consul, who from the start warns Pinkerton not to trifle with Butterfly’s emotions; both are also fine singers and actors. The Orchestre de Paris performs Puccini’s glorious music under conductor James Conlon. (213) 848-3500.

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In conjunction with its ongoing “Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists From Hitler” exhibition, the L.A. County Museum of Art is launching “Coming to America: Dreams and Realities” (Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the museum’s Bing Theater).

The highlight of the program is a pristine print of Reginald Barker’s remarkable and virtually unknown 1915 silent feature, “The Italian,” which presents the betrayal of the American dream in its harshest light. George Beban, a fine actor, has the title role of an immigrant shoeshine stand operator whose life turns to ashes in the face of dire poverty.

A handsome Thomas Ince production, the film is fascinating on another level as Barker resourcefully employs a rather more spacious downtown L.A. to stand in for New York’s Lower East Side and even makes, via tight shots, Venice, Calif., stand in for Venice, Italy.

Playing with it are three shorts: D.W. Griffith’s “A Child of the Ghetto” (1910), Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant” (1917) and Buster Keaton’s “My Wife’s Relations” (1922). (213) 857-6010.

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The American Cinematheque’s rewarding fourth annual “Recent Spanish Cinema” survey continues at the Raleigh Studios’ Chaplin Theater Friday at 7 p.m. with a pair of suspense dramas at their most substantial and intelligent.

Veteran actor-turned-director Imanol Uribe’s “Bwana” finds a quite typical working-class family stranded on a deserted beach. There they encounter a tall, handsome young black man (Emilio Buale) in a far more desperate predicament whose Spanish is limited to “Viva Espan~a!” “Bwana” is a devastating, universal comment on racism--and how scary ordinary, not to mention some not-so-ordinary, people can be.

Uribe and one of his stars, Maria Barranco, will discuss the film after its screening.

Alejandro Amenabar’s “Thesis,” the second feature on the program, stars Ana Torrent, the unforgettable child with the haunting eyes in those ‘70s masterpieces “The Spirit of the Beehive” and “Cria Cuervos” who has become a stunning woman.

Torrent plays a Madrid graduate student in cinema whose proposed thesis, “Audiovisual Violence and the Family,” plunges her into danger as she delves into the bleak world of gore porn. Amenabar keeps us guessing--and scared--right up to his film’s climax.

Both of Torrent’s co-stars, playing fellow students, are as memorable as she: Fele Martinez, a Latin Keanu Reeves, who is edgy, smart and alienated; and Eduardo Noriega, who is handsome and insinuating.

Amenabar raises serious issues in regard to screen violence without exploiting them. (213) 466-FILM.