A Foreign Dilemma

In a coincidence unfortunate for those moviegoers eager to sample the latest in Polish and German films, the third annual Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles and “Made in Germany,” the second annual Festival of German Cinema, Los Angeles, both run Friday through Nov. 15. The Polish series, which kicked off with a gala screening Tuesday at the Directors Guild of America with a new version of “Quo Vadis,” directed by the veteran Jerzy Kawalerowicz, will be held at the Monica 4-Plex, and the German series at the Music Hall. Additionally, those events begin as AFI Fest 2001 enters its final weekend, giving them further competition for fans of foreign and specialized films.

Among films in the Polish festival available for preview was Filip Bajon’s sweeping “The Spring to Come” (Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.). Given their country’s turbulent history it’s no wonder Poles are masters of the historical epic, of which Bajon’s film is a stunning example. Some familiarity with Polish history in the early 20th history is helpful but not essential. Based on Stefan Zeromski’s novel, it opens in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the eve of the Russian Revolution. Baryka Cezary (Mateusz Domiecki) is a young man who has lived a privileged life as the son of an oil engineer in a community of Polish expatriates. His father (Janusz Gajos) is conscripted to fight in World War I while his mother (Krystyna Janda) falls victim to invading Bolsheviks. Miraculously, his dying father returns to rescue him and bring him back to Poland, just in time for the Russian invasion there.

Amid the chaos of war and political instability, Baryka winds up in a protracted idyll amid the Polish landed gentry who carry on their self-indulgent way of life supported by a seemingly docile peasantry. Baryka perceives the vulnerability of such an inequitable social structure but is lulled into an interlude of pleasure in a tragically false paradise. Domiecki has star quality and easily carries this epic, which features, among others, veteran star Daniel Olbrychski.

The festival is honoring Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s half-century career by presenting several of his earlier films, including his 1966 “Pharaoh” (Sunday at 4 p.m.) It is that rarest of rarities, an intellectual blockbuster, possessing the scale and sweep of a DeMille epic but sophisticated rather than florid in tone. In one of the world cinema’s finest evocations of ancient times, Kawalerowicz takes a singularly tough-minded look at the decline of the Egyptian empire, and his vision is profoundly tragic and ambiguous. Handsome young Ramses XIII (George Zelnicki) and his High Priest Herhor (Piotr Pawlocsvi) are adversaries, both essentially noble in character, though not above justifying the means by the end.

As Ramses matures he becomes convinced a policy of military aggression would restore Egypt’s waning power (and replenish nearly empty royal coffers) while Herhor sees this policy as contrary to his fanatically held religious beliefs. What emerges is a classic struggle between church and state that lays bare all the human failings--greed, ambition, self-interest, self-deception, hypocrisy, duplicity, etc.--that seem inevitable byproducts in the grasp for power and authority. “Pharaoh” at once seems so authentic as to be a bas relief come to life and timeless as an expression of futility. Polish Festival information: (818) 982-8827; Monica 4-Plex: (310) 394-9741.

“Made in Germany” opens Friday at the Music Hall at 6 p.m. with “The Tunnel,” which also screened in AFI Fest 2001 and proved to be the most exciting German movie since “Das Boot” with its depiction of a bold escape attempt from East Germany just after the Berlin Wall went up. It screens again Sunday at 4 p.m.

Wednesday night brings back-to-back screenings of two fine films. Otto Alexander Jahrreiss’ engrossing “Zoom” (7:30 p.m.) begins as a tale of obsession that takes an unexpected direction. Florian Lukas stars as Waller, a solemn, unemployed young man who has become obsessed with his next-door neighbor in a vast, impersonal apartment house. She is Wanda (Oana Solomon), a Romanian emigrant working as a call girl. Waller has begun videotaping her clients in order to blackmail them so that he can turn over whatever he is able to extort from them to Wanda in a series of unmarked envelopes. The story gets underway as Waller makes his first attempt to make direct contact with Wanda.

Swiss director Xavier Koller, whose memorable “Journey of Hope” won an Oscar a decade ago, has made a captivating period piece with “Gripsholm” (9:30 p.m.), based on the autobiographical novel and the life of writer Kurt Tucholsky, played by Ulrich Noethen. Noethen’s Tucholsky is a slim, debonair man, a celebrated writer of Berlin cabaret songs and an outspoken critic of the Nazis. The summer of 1932 approaches as a last sunny moment of calm before the storm. Tucholsky accepts the invitation of one of his patrons, a Swedish baron whose home is one of his country’s landmark structures, Gripsholm Castle, and arrives with his beautiful girlfriend Lydia (Heike Makatsch).

There are a couple of crucial plot points that the current English subtitles do not convey, but this does not prevent “Gripsholm” from emerging as a ravishing, poignant evocation of an all-too-fleeting interlude before the onset of horror and chaos in which Tucholsky attempts to stave off despair by a momentary escape into eroticism. “Gripsholm” is at once beautiful and bleak and a highly accomplished work by a proven screen storyteller. Jahrreiss and Koller will appear with their films. Oliver Hirschbiegel will appear with his highly praised “The Experiment,” Germany’s official Oscar entry, which closes the festival Nov. 15 after a 7:30 p.m. audience award presentation. Festival information: (310) 335-5610. Music Hall: (310) 274-6869.

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Other key weekend offerings: UCLA Film Archive’s in-person tribute to a Hong Kong gangster auteur, “Go, Johnnie To!” (310) 206-FILM; “A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Elmer Bernstein” at LACMA (323) 857-6010; and the “Shock-O-Rama-A-Go-Go” marathon at the downtown Palace Theater, composed of more than 30 films and billed as the world’s largest B-movie festival. (323) 345-2322.