Just the Ticket

Let the film festivals begin: Moviegoers looking for the offbeat and the unusual have a wealth of special screenings from which to choose this week and next.

Starting Friday at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, a series of classic Hollywood pictures chosen for their moody weather leads off with “Rain,” a 1932 melodrama starring Joan Crawford as a saucy prostitute on the lam from San Francisco to Pago Pago. Walter Huston plays the tyrannical missionary preacher whose attempt to reform her comes to a rather unholy end.

Friday, too, a weeklong festival of double-billed Cult Classics commences with “Pulp Fiction” and “Trainspotting” at the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar, while Spike & Mike’s Festival of Animation, as well as their Sick and Twisted Show, premieres at the Edwards Harbor Twin cinema in Costa Mesa.

W. Somerset Maugham has described how in mid-career, after great success as a novelist and playwright, he turned to short stories as an outlet for the notes he jotted daily in his journals about people he’d met and places he’d been. “Rain,” his first and perhaps most famous story, was written in 1919 and came directly from entries he recorded while traveling from Hawaii to Pago Pago.

He recalled that just before his ship sailed, there had been a raid in Honolulu’s red light district. A rumor spread among the ship’s passengers that one of the prostitutes had come aboard, thus escaping arrest. Her name--now notorious, thanks to Maugham--was Sadie Thompson.

The author noted in his journal that Sadie was “pretty in a coarse fashion, perhaps not more than 27.” Two other passengers who also caught his attention (but whose names he changed in the story) were a tall, hollow-cheeked missionary with “full sensual lips . . . a cadaverous air and a look of suppressed fire” and the missionary’s wife, whose New England “face was long like a sheep’s” and whose grating voice was “high, metallic and without inflection.”

“Rain” became a valuable literary property. It was turned into a play (not written by Maugham but based on his story) and opened on Broadway in 1922, starring Jeanne Eagals as Sadie. A smash hit, it ran for 18 months. The movie rights were snapped up in 1923 for a hefty $150,000.

Hollywood eventually made several versions of “Rain.” In the first--”Sadie Thompson,” a 1928 silent--Gloria Swanson had the title role. In this, the second version, the feisty Crawford was cast to perfection. So too was Huston, who often played ice-cold heavies early in his Hollywood career, despite his warm off-screen personality. A third version, “Miss Sadie Thompson” (1953), starred Rita Hayworth and Jose Ferrer.

Filmed on Catalina, “Rain” was directed by the versatile Lewis Milestone, who’d made “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 1930 and “The Front Page” in 1931. “Rain” holds up remarkably well for the first hour or so, largely because of his liquid storytelling style and smooth camera work.

But the picture succumbs in the last half-hour to several major flaws: a dated script by Maxwell Anderson that stuck close to the play; Huston’s uncharacteristically melodramatic acting, which becomes increasingly hammy as the story progresses toward its lurid climax; and predictable moralizing, which was in keeping with the strict (though not then strictly enforced) Hollywood production code of the early 1930s.

Following “Rain” in the museum’s weather-themed series will be John Ford’s “The Hurricane” (1937), Feb. 20, and John Huston’s “Key Largo” (1948), March 20. All screenings are at 6:30 p.m. at the Lyon Auditorium, Museum Education Center of the Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. $3-$5. (714) 759-1122.

The Cult Classics Film Festival at the Port Theatre (2905 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar), which runs through Jan. 29, features more than a dozen pictures dating from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. (714) 673-6260

The opening double bill of Quentin Tarantino’s blood-and-guts comic thriller “Pulp Fiction” (1994) and Danny Boyle’s not-so-comic but still very funny “Trainspotting” (1996) is recommended for the strong of stomach and sound of mind. Fainthearted moviegoers easily upset by pictorial violence and foul language are advised not to attend. (Fri.-Sat.)

Next come “Microcosmos” (1996), a brilliant documentary about the insect world that had reviewers swooning over the aliens in our midst (or at least the splendors in the grass), and “Baraka” (1992), a gorgeous visual tone poem that evokes the planetary ecology of Earth. One reviewer described it as National Geographic magazine come to life. (Sun.)

The cult festival then turns to satire a la Kubrick with “Lolita” (1962) and “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964). Both pictures capture (and flay) the uptight ethos of their period, “Lolita” with a blackly comic take on sexual hypocrisy and “Dr. Strangelove” with an even blacker comic take on the doomsday mind-set of the Cold War.

Though critics have had serious reservations about “Lolita,” calling it pretentious and alienating, not to worry. James Mason gives a sterling performance as the middle-aged Humbert Humbert, who swoons over a 14-year-old girl and marries her mother to be near her.

Besides, the critics have gone just as far overboard in the opposite direction about “Dr. Strangelove,” terming it a work of sheer genius. With Peter Sellers, of course, in the title role. (Mon.-Tues.)

Capping off the first week of the festival, the Port will offer two galvanizing films directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro: “Taxi Driver” (1976) and “Raging Bull” (1980), both signature works that defined their Hollywood era and remain powerful benchmarks of worldwide film culture, not only for the performances but for the painful issues of violence and anger they address. (Wed.-Jan. 22)

Meanwhile, Spike & Mike’s Festival of Animation, beginning Friday at the Edwards Harbor Twin cinema (2300 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa), brings back the annual anthology of best animated shorts compiled by the producers of the first two Beavis and Butthead films. Among the films being premiered are “The Spirit of Christmas” by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, “Sea Slugs!” by Adam Lane and “Little Rude Riding Hood” by Mike Grimshaw.

The Sick and Twisted Show will present animated work that is, in Spike and Mike’s inimitable words, “simply too revolting or adult . . . for our prestigious and tasteful” main festival. The Sick and Twisted lineup is “not for those with delicate sensibilities,” they add, or for anyone younger than 18. Selections will include “Hut Sluts,” “Ah, L’Amour,” “Lloyd’s Lunchbox” and premieres of “Smoking,” “Fast Driver” “The Booby Trap” and “Barflies.” (714) 631-3501

In other Orange County venues:

The “Out on Screen: Queer Film and Video” festival continues today at 7:30 p.m. with “Ambiguously Gay Duo 3, 4, 5” (1996) and “Mariposas en Andamio” (“Butterflies on the Scaffold”) (1996), presented by the UC Irvine Film and Video Center. At the Humanities Instructional Building, Room 100, UCI campus, Irvine. $4-$6. (714) 824-7418

“Guelwaar” (1992), Ousmane Sembene’s French-African film about a political activist and the conflict between Catholics and Muslims caused by his death, will be screened Friday at 7 and 9 p.m by the UC Irvine Film Society. At the UCI Student Center’s Crystal Cove Auditorium, near Bridge Road, UCI campus, Irvine. $2.50-$4.50. (714) 824-5588.