Strong, Silent Type

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Berlin Between the Wars” series starts Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Bing Theater with a genuine rarity, Joe May’s 1929 silent “Asphalt,” restored in 1995 with a romantic yet edgy score newly composed by Karl-Ernst Sasse and performed by the Brandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Today, May is remembered as the pioneer filmmaker who gave Fritz Lang his first break, as a screenwriter, but “Asphalt” is a revelation, a testament to the transforming power of the purely visual of what might be an otherwise routine melodrama.

The tall, boyish-looking Gustav Frolich is actually more effective here than he was as the rather sappy hero of Lang’s “Metropolis.” He’s a naive Berlin traffic cop who becomes ensnared by a femme fatale (Betty Amann, a dead ringer for the Liza Minnelli of “Cabaret”) who could easily ruin his life and career. The master cinematographer Gustav Rittau’s superb camera work and May’s impassioned yet sophisticated direction in the Expressionist tradition make every moment fresh and persuasive. Amann may be not be the equivalent of the Louise Brooks of “Pandora’s Box” (1928) or the Marlene Dietrich of “The Blue Angel” (1930), yet “Asphalt” is strong enough to stand between those two classics artistically as well as chronologically to form a Weimar-era femme fatale trilogy.

It will be followed by the 1931 version of “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” starring Heinrich George. Martin Koerber, archivist with the Filmmuseum Berlin-Deutsche Kinemathek, will appear with that film and on Saturday with the 7:30 p.m. screening of “People on Sunday” (1930), directed by Robert Siodmak, Curt Siodmak (who is also scheduled to attend), Fred Zinnemann and Edgar Ulmer, from a script by Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak. Walter Ruttmann’s rapturous “Berlin, Symphony of a Great City” (1927) will follow. With live musical accompaniment by Robert Israel. (323) 857-6177.

*

In 1996, Kirk Harris made a notable feature debut as writer, director and star of “Loser,” the story of a troubled young man going nowhere fast. Harris returns in “My Sweet Killer,” which premieres at 10 tonight at the Sunset 5 in West Hollywood, where it will play Fridays and Saturdays at midnight. Although the film, written by Harris and directed by Justin Dossetti, is overly theatrical and contrived, Harris is again impressive as an even more disturbed individual, a mental patient with a past darker than anyone suspects. He’s tempted by street drugs, especially when his perfunctory and dangerously obtuse psychiatrist refuses to give him sleep aids. Indeed, the film is as much a criticism of the inadequacies of the support available for mentally disturbed outpatients as it is a study of a disintegrating personality. (323) 848-3500.

*

The Village at the Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place in Hollywood, presents “Outfest Retrospective: Arthur Dong” Wednesday through March 11. It’s a selection of the filmmaker’s outstanding documentaries with Dong present at all events, which culminate with a daylong master class conducted by the filmmaker. The retrospective begins Wednesday at 7 p.m. with a screening of “Coming Out Under Fire” (1994) and an opening-night reception. This informative, consciousness-raising film documents the experiences of nine gay and lesbian World War II veterans amid a plethora of archival footage, and framed within the context of the recent and ongoing debate over gays in the military.

All the men and women say they had no problems getting along with their straight colleagues, many of whom assumed their sexual orientation and were not upsetby it, but that they lived in constant fear of being denounced and subjected to the draconian anti-gay regulations established early in the war. Most left with well-earned honorable discharges, but several were not so fortunate, bearing scars from those experiences to this day. Yet if a gay man didn’t lie to get into the service, the alternative was to be sent home bearing the stigma of “sexual pervert.”

Dong, who based his film on Allan Berube’s 1990 book of the same name, makes clear that World War II was the first time gays and lesbians were brought together in large numbers; this breaking down of isolation helped lay the foundation for the eventual gay liberation movement. (323) 960-2394.

*

The UCLA Film Archive’s “Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance: Musicals from Around the World,” which runs March 4-18 at Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater, commences Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with series curator Mark Cantor’s film-clip presentation, “Tribute to African American Divas.” It will be followed by the 1935 French production, “Princess Tam Tam,” a reworking of “Pygmalion,” which finds Josephine Baker’s Tunisian shepherdess (!) transformed into an Indian princess (!!) by a French author (Albert Prejean). (310) 206-FILM.

To mark the centennial of the birth of Luis Bun~uel and the publication of “An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Bun~uel,” edited by his sons Juan Luis and Rafael Bun~uel, LACMA is screening Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. those Surrealist landmarks that launched Bun~uel’s career: the 18-minute “Un Chien Andalou” (An Andalusian Dog) (1928), written with Salvador Dali, and “L’Age d’Or” (The Golden Age). The first, in which a series of bizarre incidents proceed as disconnected fragments in a dream, has one of the most notoriously unsettling images in all cinema: a woman’ eye being slashed in half by a razor. “Un Chien Andalou” has been in general circulation for years, but “L’Age d’Or,” also written with Dali, is rarely screened.

A book could be written about the implications of the disturbing imagery of “L’Age d’Or,” which unfolds like a Freudian nightmare in its all-out attack on modern society. The vehement anticlericalism and mordant, anarchic humor permeating Bun~uel’s work right up to the end of his life are in full force in “L’Age d’Or,” which begins with an outrageous parody of the founding of Rome, the cornerstone of Western culture.

At this pompous, ceremonial occasion we meet a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lya Lys) who fall passionately in love but are quickly separated for outraging public decency. From then on, all the obstacles placed in the path of the lovers’ reunion form a scathing indictment of the hypocrisies and evils of church and state. The film culminates at a gala entertainment in a chateau in which the guests are so self-absorbed that they don’t even notice a peasant driving a horse-drawn cart through a ballroom. A celebration of mad passion that dared to equate Christ and the Marquis de Sade, “L’Age d’Or” is no longer so shocking, yet it remains powerful and perplexing.

Who could ever forget Lys discovering a cow in her bed or sucking the toes of a statue in frustration when Modot breaks off their lovemaking to answer a phone call? Part silent, part talkie (in French), “L’Age of d’Or” remains a landmark in surreal cinema. (323) 857-6010.

*

“Looking to the East,” at the Goethe Institute, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100, Los Angeles, is composed of five films screening Tuesdays and Thursdays through March 16 that look at life in Eastern Europe and beyond in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The series begins Tuesday with Viola Stephan’s documentary “Slask-Silesia,” a contemplative chronicle of the lives of ethnic Germans left isolated in Poland in the aftermath of World War II and the advent of Communist rule. Cut off from their roots, these now elderly individuals, mainly women and hearty survivors, have stuck together for mutual support and friendship yet have gone ahead and fashioned new lives for themselves. “Slask-Silesia” also documents a beautiful region, one of quaint, small city streets and lush countryside. Information: (323) 525-3388.

*

The Laemmle Theaters’ “Documentary Days 2000” series continues with Martha Swetzoff’s compelling and evocative “Theme: Murder,” in which she investigates the 1968 killing of her father, a longtime prominent Boston art dealer who was at once a loving family man and a secret homosexual. Swetzoff became increasingly convinced that the police did not investigate his murder as rigorously as they could have because of her father’s sexual orientation. Swetzoff also explores the death’s lingering impact on herself and her family. “Theme: Murder” screens Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5, (323) 848-3500, and at the Monica 4-Plex, (310) 394-9741, March 11 and 12 at 11 a.m.

Note: “The Five Faces of James Bond,” five 007 double features, screen Friday through Tuesday at the Nuart, (310) 478-6379.

The Silent Movie commences a week of horror pictures Tuesday with Tod Browning’s 1932 “Freaks,” (323) 655-2520.