An Italian Master

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Life, Italian Style: The Films of Pietro Germi” celebrates the gifted director best remembered for his uproarious, pitch-black social satire, “Divorce--Italian Style.” The movie stars Marcello Mastroianni as a lounge lizard of a Sicilian nobleman desperate to get rid of an inconvenient wife. “Divorce,” which screens Saturday at 7:30 p.m., won the 1962 best foreign-language film Oscar; a decade later Germi was dead from hepatitis at the age of 60. Germi, however, made a number of other notable, less-known films, and a selection of them commences screening tonight at 7:30 at LACMA’s Bing Theater (5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles) with “The Way of Hope” (1950) and “In the Name of the Law” (1948).

“The Way of Hope,” which director Nicholas Ray declared was “the most lyrical film I have ever seen,” is a Neo-Realist masterpiece, its obscurity wholly undeserved. It brings to mind Xavier Koller’s 1990 Oscar winner, “Journey of Hope,” as a story of a group of impoverished people attempting to enter another country illegally in search of work and a better life. “The Way of Hope” also recalls other Italian films that call attention to the desperate plight of the poor in Sicily. With the promise of factory work in France, the able-bodied among the inhabitants of a Sicilian town whose mine has been shut down sign up with a man who guarantees them safe passage and jobs across the border. Thus begins a grueling odyssey, where along the way the Sicilians encounter ferocious discrimination and outright violence. Raf Vallone stars as a widower who emerges as the group’s leader, drawn to a beautiful young woman (Elena Varsi), an outcast for having taken up with a criminal on the run.

If “The Way of Hope” seems a towering achievement, “In the Name of the Law” is a fine work in a more conventional vein. Massimo Girotti, one of the Italian cinema’s most durably handsome and capable leading men for 40 years, stars as an idealistic young magistrate assigned to an ancient and remote Sicilian mountain village. The villagers are in the grip of the Mafia and inherently distrustful of outsiders, a combination that threatens to defeat Girotti before he even gets started. Like “The Way of Hope,” “In the Name of the Law” is not without humor but is above all a stinging protest of an allegiance to hidebound tradition reinforced through fear. For screening information, call: (323) 857-6010.

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On March 20, 1984, a thin but cheerful Andy Kaufman made what would be his final public appearance, two months before his death from cancer. The occasion was the premiere at the Nuart Theater of “My Breakfast With Blassie,” a spoof of “My Dinner With Andre” conceived by Johnny Legend and Linda Lautrec, that would find Kaufman meeting fabled wrestler Freddie Blassie at the long-gone Sambo’s coffee shop at 6th and Vermont streets in L.A. “My Breakfast With Blassie” screens again at the Nuart (11272 Santa Monica Blvd.), tonight only, with added footage of Kaufman’s arrival for the premiere. Legend will appear at the 7 p.m. screening with some surprise guests.

Back in the ‘50s, when local TV was dominated by popular-orchestra programs and wrestling matches, ferocious Freddie Blassie, self-proclaimed “King of Men,” became a household name, a man whose favorite put-down was “pencil-necked geek.” Since Kaufman became notorious for wrestling with women, it was only natural that an acquaintance would spring up between these two practiced showmen. Kaufman wears a neck brace, from having been body-slammed by heavyweight champ Jerry Lawler on the David Letterman show, and the massive Blassie arrives deeply tanned and silver-haired, with a Hawaiian shirt, white trousers and gold jewelry. They seem genuinely fond of each other, and their restaurant conversation is sometimes funny and outrageous. Bob Zmuda gives the film a welcome, if gross, jolt as a weirdo customer who interrupts their meal and leads to its conclusion. “My Breakfast With Blassie” is not exactly a thigh-slapper but is a record of two distinctive personalities who captured the public imagination. (310) 478-6379.

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The American Cinematheque presents Friday at 7 p.m. a 20th anniversary screening of Richard Rush’s “The Stunt Man,” plus the world premiere of “The Sinister Saga of Making ‘The Stunt Man.’ ” “The Stunt Man,” which Rush and Lawrence Marcus adapted from the Paul Brodeur novel, is an idiosyncratic and complex film in which a young fugitive (Steve Railsback) takes a job as a stuntman on a World War I movie being shot at the Hotel del Coronado. He falls in love with the film-within-the-film’s leading lady, played by Barbara Hershey--and becomes convinced that the film’s colorful director, Peter O’Toole, is plotting to kill him. A triumph of visual style, “The Stunt Man” is a love story, an action film, a suspense thriller, an intellectual take on the relationship between fantasy and reality and how the confusion between the two heightens paranoia. In short, it’s just the kind of picture--and an American one made by Hollywood veterans at that--studios don’t know how to sell, and Rush’s fascinating documentary not only illuminates a terrifically ambitious production but also the struggle to get the film the release it deserved. Rush, who will appear Friday, succeeded pretty well, netting three Oscar nominations, despite the fact that his film was no longer playing the Westside during the academy voting period. At the Lloyd E. Rigler Theater at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 466-FILM.

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Matthew Barney’s surreal western “Cremaster 2” (at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., Friday through Monday) is yet another testament to Barney’s ability to give awesome expression to a singularly vivid imagination. You might never have guessed it, so it’s helpful to know that in the most literal sense it’s about executed murderer Gary Gilmore’s search for Harry Houdini (Norman Mailer, no less) in the afterlife. Barney, who plays Gilmore, seems even more fixated on bees and the beehive, a key symbol of the Mormon religion in which Barney was raised. It would seem that he sees the relationship between the queen bee and a drone as a metaphor for the relationship between men and women. Barney also is much preoccupied with hexagonal motifs, suggesting both the vision of the bee and the structure of its hive, but as before Barney links mankind, machinery and the universe with a flow of stunning yet disturbing images that are highly Freudian and inevitably are accompanied with intimations of depravity and death. Ultimately, Barney evokes a sense of constant mutation in a celebration of metamorphosis. Think of Salvador Dali let loose with a camera and crew in the Southwest and you will get a rough idea of the amazing and bizarre vision of Matthew Barney (who will appear Friday at 7:30 p.m.). (310) 478-6379.

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The UCLA Film Archive’s “New Iranian Films, Rediscoveries and the Diaspora” commences Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater with Jamsheed Akrami’s “Friendly Persuasion.” The work is a straightforward documentary on Iranian filmmaking that serves as a splendid introduction to films from a country that has established one of the world’s finest national cinemas. Akrami will be present. (310) 206-8588.

Among the films screening at the Pan African Film Festival, which ends Monday at the Magic Johnson Theaters (4020 Marlton Ave., Baldwin Hills), surely one of the most provocative will be Stanley Bennett Clay’s corrosive “Ritual” (Saturday at 9 p.m., Monday, at 8:20 p.m.), which he skillfully adapted to the screen from his prizewinning stage play. Clarence Williams III stars as attorney Leon Becker, who has striven for success so mightily he ignores serious problems within his family. Becker’s brilliant son, Mason (Shawn Michael Howard), senses from phone calls and letters from his mother (Denise Nicholas) that something is wrong, and leaves his Ivy League college to come home and see for himself what’s going on.

Home is one of Malibu’s grandest, sleekest contemporary ocean-side mansions. Mason’s mother, Sylvia, who gave up a Broadway career to marry his father, is drifting into alcoholism, as his older sister Teresa (Angelle Brooks) indulges in a full-blown Elektra complex. Although a student herself, Teresa has taken over running the house, subverting her mother’s position at every opportunity and attending to her father’s every need to the point of seductiveness. Mason sets about getting his parents’ marriage back on track, succeeding almost too swiftly, only to confront the sister who has always been consumed with a jealousy toward him that manifests itself in a virulent homophobia. (That Mason is gay does not seem to be among the problems he has with his hard-driving father.) “Ritual” takes a shocking turn, but Clay is tough-minded enough, and his cast strong enough, to sustain it. In Leon we are able to see the tremendous price a member of a minority can pay for success in the mainstream world, yet Clay is too mature to excuse the Beckers, on the basis of the destructive effects of bigotry, from taking responsibility for their malaise. Indeed, the Beckers have arrived at a level of affluence that makes them vulnerable to the ills that have plagued rich families from time immemorial. (323) 290-5900; (323) 295-1706.

Note: The American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen presents tonight at 7:30 Frank Novak’s “Good Housekeeping,” a drama about a disintegrating marriage, accompanied by Mitchell Rose’s short, “Elevator World.” Both are grand jury prize winners at the recent Slamdance Festival. (323) 466-FILM.