Taste of Cinematic Goulash

A standout in the third annual Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles, which runs Friday through next Thursday at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, is Ildiko Enyedi’s stylish yet poignant fable “Simon Magus” (Saturday at 7:15 p.m. and Wednesday at 9:50 p.m.), with the veteran Peter Andorai in the title role. The director takes her inspiration from the Samaritan magician Simon Magus, who in Rome in AD 100 had the impiety to challenge the powers of St. Peter. But her Simon meets a fate diametrically opposite to that of his biblical counterpart, which puts a humanistic face on religious belief.

Middle-aged, paunchy and weary, Andorai’s Simon has been summoned from Budapest to Paris to put his parapsychological gift to use in solving a murder. An old rival (Peter Halas) then lassos him into an extraordinary test of their powers. In the meantime, Simon, a tall, bearded man of commanding presence and contemplative temperament, is captivated by a beautiful student (Julie Delarme). There is a shimmering, poetic quality to this film, which seems at once to be floating along in its own realm and also happening in the here and now.

Godros Frigyes’ “Glamour” (Sunday, after the 7:30 p.m. screening of the one-hour documentary “The Eyes of the Holocaust” and Tuesday at 7:15 p.m.) will instantly recall Istvan Szabo’s recent “Sunshine” as the saga of a Hungarian Jewish family whose fate reflects the upheavals of the 20th century.

Yet it is quite different, a jaunty absurdist tale that surprisingly takes on a more serious note only with the coming of post-World War II communist rule and the thwarted 1956 Hungarian Revolution. At the the film’s center is Imre (Karoly Eperjes), the stalwart son of the prosperous proprietor (Gyorgy Barko) of a Budapest furniture store that manages to survive every drastic turn of events.

Via a matchmaker, Imre meets and marries a beautiful German girl, Gerda (Eszter Onodi), a Gentile, which takes no small amount of maneuvering in 1935. Frigyes’ light touch is not frivolous in effect but rather sets off by contrast the dire events that swirl about the family and attests to their buoyant spirit of survival.

Another period piece, Krisztina Deak’s “Jadwiga’s Pillow” (Friday at 9:50 p.m. and Wednesday at 5 p.m.) is pretty heavy going. Set in the Hungarian Plain as World War I unfolds off screen, it tells of the big, boyish Ondris (Viktor Bodo), ecstatic at the prospect of marrying his late father’s ward, Jadwiga (Ildiko Toth), who has spent so much of her time being educated in Germany that Ondris has only met her once.

She has, alas, married him only because of a glitch in her relationship with her handsome lover Franci (Roman Luknar), who soon enough turns up to resume their affair. Pretty soon Jadwiga and Ondris are wallowing in melodramatic misery that seals Ondris’ fate. The film’s incessant emotional extravagance proves tiresome, and not helping matters is that Jadwiga is so selfish and Ondris so immature that it’s hard to care about them. Festival: (818) 848-5902; Music Hall: (310) 274-6869.

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The American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen series presents tonight at 7:30 at the Egyptian Theater Allan Holzman’s effective filming of Cynthia Gates Fujikawa’s “Old Man River,” a one-woman show in which she charts her attempt to uncover and comprehend her late father.

Through the specifics of her situation--a Japanese American father who never spoke of the internment camps or his prewar marriage and a white mother overcome by mental illness--we can see the eternal struggle of children to understand their parents and to forge their own identities.

Playing with it is Lili Mariye’s short “The Shangri-La Cafe,” which tells of a Japanese American restaurant owner standing up to racism in post-World War II Las Vegas. Information: (323) 466-FILM.

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Friends of the Orpheum, dedicated to restoring and preserving the 1926 landmark theater at 842 S. Broadway, will hold the sixth edition of its hugely popular annual Spook-a-Thon Halloween Film Festival, which now takes place over three Friday nights: this Friday, Oct. 20 and 27. Highlights include a tribute to producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, a program of shorts from the Sci-Fi Channel, a “Monster Mash”-themed rock ‘n’ roll stage show and an expanded Seance Room featuring palm and Tarot card readers and a teller of ghost stories.

Kicking off for the first time on a Friday the 13th, the Spook-a-Thon, with its “less gore and more horror” family-oriented programming, starts at 7 p.m. with two Disney cartoons, “Skeleton Dance” (1929) and “Lonesome Ghosts” (1937). Richard Fleischer’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1954), with Kirk Douglas and James Mason in the Jules Verne adventure, follows at 7:15 p.m. The rarely shown “Charlie Chan at the Opera” (1936) screens at 9:45 p.m., followed at 11 by “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972) for which viewers are encouraged to dress up as one of the film’s many key characters. Information: (213) 239-0949.

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Milestone Film & Video will present its 10th Anniversary Retrospective Friday through next Thursday at the Nuart with a top-notch array of rare and vintage films that it has discovered over the past decade, starting with Takeshi Kitano’s “Fireworks,” plus the Hitchcock rarities “Bon Voyage” and “Adventure Malgache.” This touring series benefits archival film preservation in the U.S. and England. (310) 478-6379.

The American Cinematheque will celebrate the 78th anniversary of the opening of its venue, the Egyptian Theater, at 7 p.m. Wednesday with the screening of two Buster Keaton classics, “Cops” (1922) and “Sherlock Jr.” (1924), both shot in and around Hollywood. Leonard Maltin will introduce the films and conduct a discussion with Keaton’s friend Loyal Lucas. John Bengston, author of “Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton,” will deliver a presentation on the surviving locations used in Keaton films.

Information: (323) 466-FILM.