Fukasaku a Veteran of Many Battlefields

The American Cinematheque’s “Battles Without Honor & Humanity: The Films of Kinji Fukasaku” reveals the veteran Japanese filmmaker, now 70, as much more than a cult director--indeed, as a major screen artist. Justly celebrated for decades for his no-holds-barred yakuza (gangster) pictures, Fukasaku brings to mind Samuel Fuller in his uncompromising, psychologically complex and visually dynamic films of much visceral impact and stinging social criticism. Fukasaku will be on hand at the Egyptian to discuss all his films after their screenings through Sunday.

The series, which continues through Jan. 28, commences tonight at 8 with a sneak preview of Fukasaku’s latest, “Battle Royale,” an indictment of the institutionalization of violence. It teams Fukasaku with Takeshi “Beat” Kitano, who is charged with shepherding a high school class in a government-sponsored survival-of-the-fittest experiment on a deserted island. Actor Beat Takeshi was launched on his internationally acclaimed career as director Takeshi Kitano when in 1990 he took over for Fukasaku on “Violent Cop.”

The bloody but serious and impressive “Battles Without Honor & Humanity” (1973), screening Friday at 7 p.m., captures the mood of despair and treachery among yakuza mobs in the immediate chaotic aftermath of World War II; a 1990 poll of Japanese film critics placed it among the 20 best Japanese films of all time. It will be followed at 9:30 p.m. by “Under the Fluttering Military Flag” (1972), one of Fukasaku’s finest films and one of the first to lay the blame for World War II at the feet of Emperor Hirohito. The incomparable Sachiko Hidari, master at playing seemingly ordinary, even humble women, stars as a war widow denied a government pension because her husband (Tetsuro Tanba), a squad leader in New Guinea, had been executed for having killed his commanding officer. The film unfolds in flashbacks as Fukasaku depicts the horrendous suffering of Japanese soldiers at the hands of a brutal and fanatic military elite.

“Graveyard of Honor and Humanity” (1975), a yakuza scorcher, stars Tetsuya Watari as a sociopathic yet charismatic gangster finally too savage for his gang but sufficiently self-aware to compare his fate to that of a balloon that keeps on rising until it bursts.

Fukasaku is actually best known in America for his high-camp classics of the ‘60s, “Black Lizard” and its sequel “Black Rose,” underworld thrillers starring female impersonator Akihiro Maruyama--and also as co-director, with Richard Fleischer, of the Japanese portions of “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” a big-scale reenactment of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As stylized and fatalistic as a Louis Feuillade serial, “Black Lizard” (Sunday at 5 p.m.) casts Maruyama as a glamorous and elusive jewel thief; there’s a cameo by Maruyama’s great friend, novelist Yukio Mishima.

The 1998 “The Geisha House” (Sunday at 7:30 p.m.), which richly deserves U.S. distribution, reveals how easily the line between geisha and prostitute can blur. The film is set in 1958 in an unnamed city just before Japan’s anti-prostitution law is to take effect.

This absorbing saga unfolds as a pretty teenager (Maki Miyamoto), a servant in a geisha house, prepares to become a maiko (apprentice geisha). That means she is to be deflowered by a rich sponsor and teamed with a wealthy patron, who in return for sexual favors, will underwrite the enormous cost of her wardrobe of exquisite kimonos.

“Geisha” translates as “art person,” and the now all-but-extinct geishas are considered national treasures for their mastery of traditional song and dance. Fukasaku, however, reminds us that such women are trapped in a system that leaves them wholly dependent upon men. Even so, his geishas are scrappy and resilient, not the the often tragic heroines of the Kenji Mizoguchi classics. Sumiko Fuji (renowned as Junko Fuji, star of the “Red Peony” gambler series) is superb as Miyamoto’s elegant employer. (323) 466-FILM.

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As part of its “Powerful Actresses in Early Hollywood” series, LACMA is screening Friday at 7:30 p.m. “Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies,” produced and co-written by Elaina B. Archer and directed by Hugh Munro Neely.

This excellent documentary rescues Davies, the most gifted female comedian of the silent and early talkie eras, from her public image as the longtime mistress of publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst. For too long, Davies has been thought of as a no-talent, like the hapless Susan Alexander of “Citizen Kane.” As Davies’ movies gradually resurface, we’re able to see a radiant actress of considerable range.

Toward the end of the silent era, her comedic skills were given full scope in two classics directed by King Vidor, “The Patsy” and “Show People.” Although Davies stammered and was initially terrified of sound, she made the transition to talkies smoothly.

While Hearst, 35 years her senior, was tolerant of Davies’ many affairs, Davies retired from the screen at 40 in 1937 to devote her life to the care of Hearst until his death in her Beverly Hills home in 1951. At one point, Davies handed him a million-dollar check to enable him to save his empire. A grateful Hearst in return almost married her at last, but the deal with his New York socialite wife, Millicent, who had heretofore refused to grant him a divorce, fell through when he could not bring himself to give up his cherished Cosmopolitan magazine.

Davies’ kindness, generosity and humor are Hollywood legend, and friends attest that those qualities endured, along with her philanthropy and sharp business sense, until her death from cancer at age 64, despite her equally well-known fondness for drink--the one quality she shared with Susan Alexander, and apparently the main reason Hearst so vehemently fought “Citizen Kane.”

Ruth Warrick, who played Mrs. Kane, says of the film that “Marion got the wrong end of the bill.” The 57-minute “Captured on Film” will be followed by Davies’ 1928 “The Cardboard Lover,” with live organ accompaniment by Robert Israel.

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Tonight LACMA will present at 7:30 “An Evening With Curtis Harrington,” who will introduce a program of vintage California-made avant-garde films followed by his own debut feature, “Night Tide” (1961), a richly evocative poetic fable of the supernatural starring Dennis Hopper. (323) 857-6010.

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Actor-playwright David Drake will discuss Tim Kirkman’s imaginatively staged film version of Drake’s largely autobiographical one-man show “The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me,” after its 10 p.m. screening tonight at the Sunset 5, where it begins a Friday and Saturday midnight run this weekend. With minimal sets and props, Drake deftly dramatizes his odyssey of self-discovery as a gay man, starting with the coincidence that his sixth birthday, June 27, 1969, marked the start of the Stonewall Riots, which launched the modern gay liberation movement. (323) 848-3500.