Gems That Still Glow in the Dark

The American Cinematheque’s “Greatest Hits, 1993-1998” continues tonight at 8 at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center’s Village Theater at the Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place, with “Best of Queer Shorts,” which includes Joshua Rosenzweig’s spoofy “Scream, Teen, Scream,” featuring the inimitable Jackie Beat, and Tommy O’Haver’s “Catalina,” the inspiration for his current “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss.”

“Greatest Hits” returns to the Cinematheque’s regular venue, Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Ave., at 7:15 p.m. Friday with Chris Marker’s minimalist, 30-minute masterwork, “La Jetee,” an apocalyptic time-travel fantasy that unfolds entirely in stunning black-and-white stills. The narrator recalls how the image of a lovely woman he saw as a child at Orly Airport is his only memory to survive World War III, after which he becomes the subject of a time-travel experiment, which projects him into his past and then into the future. The results are emotionally complex and deeply romantic. A spare, supremely imaginative and profoundly evocative work from a major, innovative filmmaker.

Wim Wenders’ 1996 “A Trick of the Light” (screening after “La Jetee”) is a charming, 80-minute tribute to the largely forgotten brothers Skladanowsky, who beat out the brothers Lumiere in the public presentation of movies on a screen, which they did at Berlin’s Wintergarten on Nov. 1, 1895. (The German brothers were the first to admit that the French brothers’ Cinematographe camera/projector was decidedly superior to their Bioscope when they attended the Lumieres’ presentation in Paris on Dec. 28, 1895. Edison made his Vitascope presentation in New York on April 23, 1896.)

With a largely film-student crew, Wenders tells the quixotic story of Max and Emil Skladanowsky as a silent comedy, even using an old hand-cranked silent camera. Max (Udo Kier), the inventor among the variety artists/carnival showman brothers, and his elder daughter, Gertrud (Nadine Buttner), also serve as soundtrack narrators. With an easy grace, Wenders incorporates an interview with Max’s younger daughter, Lucie, now 91 and a delightful raconteur with total recall who still lives in the gracious townhouse her father bought in 1907 outside Berlin. “A Trick of the Light” evokes the magic of the cinema as it was being invented with an infinite charm heightened by a lovely, tinkly score.

An Andre de Toth double feature follows at 9:30 p.m. If you missed De Toth’s terse and terrific film noir “Crime Wave” (1954) the first time around at the Cinematheque, it’s back and will be followed by a discussion with De Toth and yet another of his best films, “Play Dirty” (1969), with Michael Caine, set in North Africa during World War II. Stunningly photographed by Bert Glennon in L.A. locales now drastically changed, “Crime Wave” stars Gene Nelson, one of the screen’s best dancers ever, in a most effective straight dramatic role as an ex-con who’s gone straight and gotten married (to Phyllis Kirk) but whose new life is jeopardized when some convicts break out of San Quentin. They head for L.A., kill a cop and try to force Nelson to help them knock over the Glendale branch of the Bank of America and escape to Mexico.

De Toth never makes a false move, never lets up a breakneck pace and gets sensational performances from one of those amazing casts we once took for granted in Hollywood pictures. Sterling Hayden is a tough, arrogant cop straight out of “L.A. Confidential”; Ted De Corsia, the key bad guy; Charles Bronson (still billed Buchinsky) and Timothy Carey, two of De Corsia’s henchmen. You can spot such redoubtables, among many others, as Dub Taylor, Fritz Feld, Hank Worden, Iris Adrian--and if you pay close attention, a 15-year-old Richard Benjamin.

The Cinematheque on Saturday will present a program of Sid and Marty Krofft kiddie shows at 7:15 p.m., followed by a 9:30 p.m. double feature, Curtis Harrington’s “What’s the Matter With Helen?” (1971) and Georges Franju’s “Judex” (1964). In horror films, the line between pathos and camp can be very thin--and the thinner that line, the more stunning the effect. With “Helen,” Harrington, a specialist in the macabre, daringly goes right up to the brink of disaster but never slips over. The result is a very scary show that is also a poignant drama with a pair of knockout star performances from Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters--plus a loving (and often amusing) re-creation of the ‘30s.

Reynolds and Winters play women who are linked by tragedy and who flee a small Iowa town to begin a new life together in Los Angeles, running a dancing school. Adelle (Reynolds), once a chorine, will teach; Helen (Winters) will play the piano. At first, life on the fringes of Hollywood seems to be looking up for two who have already endured so much. Even though it’s the depths of the Depression--1934--their little school prospers because so many mothers see their daughters as the next Shirley Temple. What’s more, Adelle even lands a serious beau (Dennis Weaver, excellent as a smart hick with a suave veneer), a Texas millionaire.

But Helen, consumed with guilt over the past and fervently religious, begins to go to pieces. Writer Henry Farrell (author of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”) has made both Adelle and Helen three-dimensional, and Harrington has directed Reynolds and Winters with such sensitivity that their characters’ plight becomes truly tragic. Harrington will discuss the film after its appearance.

At the same time American audiences were eagerly awaiting the next peril of Pauline, the French, already in the throes of World War I, were seeking escape in the serials of Louis Feuillade, whose black-cloaked, Zorro-hatted hero was Judex, a super-detective who anticipated indestructibles like Batman.

In 1963 director Georges Franju, long influenced by the silent cinema, decided to pay homage to Feuillade with a feature-length remake of his 12-chapter 1916 serial. The result was “Judex,” a poignant and witty picture starring Channing Pollock in the title role and Francine Berge as the adventuress Marie Verdier. (213) 466-FILM.

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The UCLA Film and Television Archive’s ninth annual “Festival of Preservation” continues tonight at 7:30 in Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater with Mitchell Leisen’s well-regarded 1934 film of the Maxwell Anderson play “Death Takes a Holiday.” It will be followed at approximately 9 p.m. with Frank Borzage’s 1930 version of Ferenc Molnar’s “Liliom,” which is virtually a filmed play, albeit a striking one, thanks to Harry Oliver’s starkly stylized sets. Oliver today is also remembered for the now-vanished Van De Kamp windmill bakery stores, the Tam O’ Shanter restaurant on Los Feliz Boulevard and the Witch’s House in Beverly Hills.

This film is not in the same league as Fritz Lang’s 1934 French version with Charles Boyer, but Charles Farrell, initially awkward in the new medium of sound, grows into his title role as the well-meaning wastrel most effectively, and Rose Hobart is a lovely Julie. The concluding sequence is a real eye-boggler, involving Liliom taking off to heaven in a cloud-painted celestial choo-choo. Rose Hobart will appear in person.

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Le Il-Mok’s “Karuna,” which screens Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Korean Cultural Center, 5505 Wilshire Blvd. (at Dunsmuir), is one of those Asian epics of unspeakable suffering, survival and ultimate spiritual redemption. It is not remotely in the league of Korea’s finest films but is a potent popular expression of a longing for reunification of South and North Korea.

It is also a mind-bogglingly melodramatic family saga that commences in 1943 when potter Chun-Soo Yang (Jong-Won Choi), so proud of his work in his country’s fabled blue celadon ware, refuses to let his son Chong-Gil (Jae-Hyun Cho) use the kiln to make some cheap pottery, in great demand due to war shortages in metals, so that he can afford to marry his true love, Boon-Nim (Sori Ok), daughter of a despotic landowner. The way in which the son reacts to his father’s refusal sets the tone for family sturm und drang for decades to come. Admission is free. (213) 936-7141.

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The Silent Society will present Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount Ranch, Cornell Road, off Mulholland Highway in Agoura Hills, an open-air screening of “M’liss” (1918), starring Mary Pickford, and “His Picture in the Papers” (1916), starring Douglas Fairbanks. (The second was unavailable for preview.) Michael Mortilla will provide musical accompaniment. “M’liss” casts Pickford as a tomboy in a rowdy tall tale of the Old West set in the High Sierra (and filmed in rugged locales). A sort of teenage Calamity Jane, Pickford is tamed by handsome new schoolmaster Thomas Meighan. Writer Frances Marion and director Marshall Neilan have considerable fun with the film’s melodramatic plot twists. Pickford is all effervescent girlishness at the film’s start, but by its end Neilan subtly makes it clear that, through the mutual attraction between her and Meighan, she’s on the verge of becoming a woman. Cari Beauchamp will introduce the films and sign her book “Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Early Women of Hollywood.” (805) 370-2301.

Notes: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, will screen “King Kong” (1933) and “Mighty Joe Young” (1949) Friday at 7:30 p.m. and host a centennial tribute to Preston Sturges Wednesday at 8 p.m. as a kickoff to a Sturges retrospective at LACMA. (310) 247-3600.

“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 2” (Sunset 5, Friday and Saturday at midnight), the most redundant sequel ever made, doesn’t remotely have the intensity or meaning of the original. But it’s a not-bad, sardonic gore show in which Henry crosses paths with a professional arsonist, with predictably horrific consequences. The less-than-convincing “kinda cute (for a white boy)” (Sunset 5, Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m.; Monica 4-Plex, Aug. 22-23 at 11 a.m.) finds a wannabe writer drawn to the worlds of strip clubs and drug deals. Sunset 5: (213) 848-3500; Monica 4-Plex: (310) 394-9741.