The Emperor Robeson

The UCLA Film Archive’s “Paul Robeson: Star of Stage and Screen” marks the centennial of the birth of the often controversial but always courageous actor-singer-activist with a retrospective of his films, spanning two weekends and highlighted by a symposium of Robeson scholars on Oct. 10.

The movies rarely if ever did justice to Robeson, who combined an imposing athlete’s physique with a superb singing voice and a natural acting ability. An outstanding intellectual and an uncompromising humanist, Robeson was a radiant, larger-than-life presence.

But in 1941, after 16 intermittent years before the camera, he finally gave up on the movies, which were always only part of a protean career that embraced the concert stage, the theater and the cause of human rights the world over. If Robeson’s films are invaluable as a record of a major figure of the 20th century, they are also a record of opportunities limited by race. Robeson died in 1976.

The retrospective, which will be introduced by actress Esther Rolle, opens at 7 tonight in the James Bridges Theater with a triple feature, which begins with “Emperor Jones,” the 1933 Dudley Murphy-directed film version of the 1920 Eugene O’Neill play. Robeson plays a naive rural Southerner who lands a job as a Pullman porter, gets caught up in Harlem high life, winds up in an island prison, only to escape and become the dictator of a nearby Caribbean island. There’s not a whole lot of point in all this, but Robeson swaggers through it all quite impressively, and the film has superior art direction and is drenched in atmosphere, particularly potent in its depiction of Harlem night life.

Robeson made his film debut in 1925 under the direction of another African American legend, pioneer filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, in “Body and Soul,” which follows “Emperor Jones” at approximately 8:30 p.m. Micheaux always had more passion than skill and was hampered by minuscule budgets, but he often could sear audiences with his images.

“Body and Soul” is silent melodrama at its most extravagant and awkward, but no Micheaux film is without its moments of power.

At approximately 10 p.m. “Body and Soul” will be followed by Kenneth MacPherson’s 1930 experimental, made-in-Switzerland silent “Borderline,” in which Robeson becomes a symbol of the natural man as opposed to neurotic, bigoted whites. What is surely Robeson’s most intriguing film was unavailable for preview. Featuring Robeson’s wife, Eslanda, the British poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Gavin Arthur.

Robeson made most of his films in Great Britain, where he had opportunities for major roles denied him in Hollywood. But they were a mixed bag at best, even though they invariably gave him a chance to sing. No wonder Robeson deplored how the 1935 “Sanders of the River” (7:30 p.m. Saturday) turned out. Produced by Alexander Korda and directed by his brother Zoltan, it’s one of those epic celebrations of the glory of the British Empire as it was heading toward its last gasp. Dedicated to the “unsung saga of the everyday courage and efficiency” of colonial civil servants, it stars Leslie Banks as a government commissioner in Africa, a noble-minded upholder of “the white man’s burden,” who clearly regards the natives as children in need of his wise, firm paternal guidance. Robeson plays a heroic chief, loyal to the crown, of course, menaced by a warrior chief.

It will be followed by Joseph Best’s “My Song Goes Forth” (1937), a 40-minute documentary of South Africa as apartheid loomed on the horizon. Robeson’s prologue is said to contradict Best’s salute to the British Empire’s “civilizing” mission.

Screening at approximately 10 p.m., “Song of Freedom” is an entertaining, amiably corny musical about a London stevedore who becomes a concert singing star but longs for his African roots, which prove to be suitably royal.

Sunday brings, at 7 p.m., “King Solomon’s Mines” (1937), a still-lively African adventure adapted from the H. Rider Haggard novel in which Robeson gradually moves to the fore as a shrewd, bemused native who offers to help an Irish beauty (Anna Lee) locate her father, who has gone off in search of a treasure in diamonds. Since it would be unthinkable that a black man and a white woman undertake the search alone, they’re accompanied by Cedric Hardwicke’s dour great white hunter, Roland Young (for comic relief), and John Loder (to serve as handsome leading man). Surprisingly inoffensive for its time and place and well-directed by Robert Stevenson, “King Solomon’s Mines” is a durable entertainment that is among Robeson’s best pictures. Lee will appear with the film.

Following it will be “Big Fella” (1937), which, like the similar “Song of Freedom,” was directed by J. Elder Wills and co-stars the exquisite Elisabeth Welch, the gifted African American singer long an expatriate in Britain. In this entirely contrived but pleasant trifle, Robeson is a Marseille waterfront shopkeeper who befriends a runaway, an unhappy English rich boy. If “Song of Freedom” is valuable as an expression of black longing to connect with African roots, “Big Fella” is also significant as a depiction of harmonious racial integration as an everyday, normal phenomenon. (310) 206-FILM.

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The second annual Latino International Film Festival will open Friday and run through Oct. 11 at the Universal City Cinemas, the Universal Studio Screening Rooms and other venues. The opening-night gala will be held at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Leonard H. Goldenson Theater, 5220 Lankershim Blvd., with opening ceremonies at 7 p.m. preceding the screening of Victor Gaviria’s superb “La Vendedora de Rosas,” which in turn will be followed by a reception. There will be various related events during the course of the festival, and students from area schools will be able to attend a number of the films under a special program.

“La Vendedora” recalls Hector Babenco’s “Pixote” and Mira Nair’s “Salaam Bombay!” in the power of its depiction of children and adolescents surviving in the streets. A film of magical beauty, earthy humor and tragic despair, it stars Leidy Tabares in the title role as a 15-year-old who sells roses in the nightclub district of Medellin, Colombia. Using nonprofessionals, Gaviria gets remarkably vital and unself-conscious portrayals of a large number of young people. At first, Tabares’ Monica seems more resilient than her friends, resisting drugs and prostitution, but as Christmas Eve draws near she gradually succumbs to the street kids’s drug habit of choice, glue-sniffing, which causes her to experience visions of of her beloved dead grandmother. As this harrowing and deeply affecting film progresses, it generates considerable concern and suspense over the fates of its various young people. “La Vendedora” reveals Gaviria to be a world-class filmmaker.

Also impressive is Venezuelan filmmaker Roman Chalbaud’s bravura allegory, “Pandemonium” (Universal CityWalk Cineplex, Monday at 5 p.m.), in which a middle-aged crippled man (Orlando Urdaneta), confined to his bed in the basement of an apartment building, operates a pirate radio station. in an unnamed police state on the verge of revolution. Sharing his makeshift basement home is his ancient grandmother, an old revolutionary; his beautiful, wanton occasional lover, Demetria (Elaiza Gil), rescued from a garbage can as a newborn; and most important and his formidable mother, Carmin (Amalia Perez Diaz). Operatic, bizarre, outrageous but never out of control, “Pandemonium” is an epic tale of innocence, corruption and survival. (213) 469-9066.

Adam Berman’s “Biker Dreams” (opening Friday for one week at the Grande 4-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A.) is a pleasant, laid-back documentary about a group of participants in the 1996 Sturgis, S.D., Bike Week Rally that contrasts a yuppie couple, Martin Tobias and Alex Landes, with the hard-core “Liddo” Jim Cornett, a bear of a man, and his wife, Scorpio. (213) 617-3084.