Documenting the Fallout of Battle

There could scarcely be a more appropriate selection to kick off LACMA’s Double Exposure: Photography Plus Film Equals Cinema, a series that considers the relationship between film and photography. Swiss documentarian Christian Frei’s acclaimed “War Photographer” (Friday at 7:30 p.m.) is a remarkable portrait of a remarkable man, James Nachtwey, who has been hailed as the world’s greatest war photographer.

A slim, silver-haired man of 52 with the looks and presence of a movie star, Nachtwey has been determined to serve the victims of battle and poverty the world over. A man of quiet dignity and compassion, he does not exploit his subjects but rather expresses their plight through his pictures, which are astonishing documents of terrible events and deeds.

Frei’s documentary begins with a quote from World War II photographer Robert Capa: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” When the situation calls for it, Nachtwey could scarcely get closer, nor in turn could Frei in following him into Kosovo after widespread massacres, into the thick of the action in Ramallah and then into the shantytowns of Jakarta, Indonesia, and a sulfur mine in East Java. Inspired by the vivid images from Vietnam, the Massachusetts-born Dartmouth graduate tells us that he soon knew he wanted to be a war photographer.

Providing insights into Nachtwey are such colleagues and friends as CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Stern magazine foreign editor Hans-Hermann Klare and Geo Saison editor in chief Christiane Breustedt, his onetime lover, who says she wishes they could have had a closer relationship but respects the demands of his work. Screenwriter Denis O’Neill, Nachtwey’s best friend since college, adds that because of Nachtwey’s dedication, he has never been able to sustain a long-term relationship or start a family. Even so, Nachtwey, while driven in the pursuit of his profession, comes across as a man content with his priorities. (323) 857-6010.

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Steven Hanft’s droll “Southlander,” tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Egyptian in the American Cinematheque’s Alternative Cinema showcase, offers an amusing, funky, near-surreal journey though L.A.’s music underground. Chance (Rory Cochrane) searches for the rare ’69 Mullowtron synthesizer stolen from his seedy station wagon. He had just acquired the instrument, whose distinctive “space” sound landed him a gig as a keyboardist with a band about to go on tour. His quest, aided dubiously by his flaky pal (Ross Harris), a rock-star wannabe, reveals the overlapping and unnoticed worlds of Los Angeles, the only place this odyssey could unfold with any credibility.

Hanft has a laid-back manner and a visual panache that are just right for this quirky adventure, which has a terrific music track. The film acquaints us with, among others, a sinister, passe rock superstar (a sly Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) and an intense, millionaire New Age musician (Gregg Henry, spot on) dedicated to destroying electronic instruments. Cochrane admirably conveys Chance’s cool manner in an increasingly frustrating predicament. There are cameos from Beth Orton, Beck and, in a funny salvage-yard vignette, Hank Williams III. (323) 466-FILM.

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“The Temptress” (1926), which screens Friday through Sunday at the Silent Movie, has been aptly described as Hollywood hokum, but it’s nonetheless a splendid example of Greta Garbo turning dross into gold. Garbo’s mentor, the great Mauritz Stiller, adapted a Vicente Blasco-Ibanez novel to the screen. He was to direct, but Irving Thalberg yanked the project away from him for a rewrite and gave it to Fred Niblo, fresh off “Ben-Hur.”

Blasco-Ibanez’s novels “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and “Blood and Sand” became two of the most enduring movies of Rudolph Valentino, the second under Niblo’s direction. But “The Temptress” is so lurid and dated it’s hard to imagine what Stiller could have done with the material that Niblo didn’t. Indeed, Niblo’s straightforward storytelling skills, his sense of the pictorial and his energy lend the film a vitality.

Garbo’s Elena captivates Antonio Moreno’s Robledo at a masked ball in Paris, where they pledge their mutual and undying love. The dashing engineer then discovers she is the wife of his good friend the Marquis de Torre Bianca (Armand Kaliz). If that’s not enough of a jolt, the next evening Robledo joins the Torre Biancas at a grand banquet thrown by a banker (Marc MacDermott), who offers a toast to Elena, declaring that she is a woman “who asks for nothing but takes all a man has to give and more,” then he swallows a glass of champagne into which he has slipped a fatal dose of poison.

The ensuing scandal surrounding the banker’s dramatic suicide drives the Marquise from the country, and, accompanied by Elena, he turns up at Robledo’s ranch, apparently having no other friend to turn to. Elena’s presence is guaranteed to wreak havoc on more men, including Lionel Barrymore, although Robledo, the one she truly loves, is determined to get on with building a dam in Argentina.

Garbo’s Elena is different from other silent-era vamps in that she is passive, and while she lives an empty existence, she says in her defense that men want her not for herself but for her body, and not for her happiness but their own. Hardly any other actress could seem so ravishing yet radiate such spiritual longing--and while wearing an immense wardrobe of elegant gowns. This sumptuous production has an astonishing, unexpected coda in which Garbo is no less than sublime. (323) 655-2520.

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The Goethe Institute’s annual Blockbuster series of recent German hits continues Tuesday at 7 p.m. at its headquarters, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100, with Ralf Huettner’s giddy romantic comedy “Moonlight Tariff.” Gruschenka Stevens stars as a vivacious artist who has just met a doctor (Tim Bergmann) and experienced a night of incomparable love with him. But that was Wednesday and now Saturday looms without Stevens’ Cora having received a call from the doctor. Cora is out of her mind with anxiety, but her best friend, Jo (Jasmin Tabatabai), insists that a woman must never call a man after they have had sex--he should make the next move. As her desperation grows, Cora starts to do the one thing Jo doesn’t want her to do, which is to think for herself. (323) 525-3388.

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The 76-minute “Taylor Mead’s Ass” (1964) and the 66-minute “Eating Too Fast” (1966) continue the Warhol on Screen series, which is part of MOCA’s Andy Warhol Retrospective. Scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Design Center’s SilverScreen Theater, both are tests of the viewer’s patience. In the first, a static camera is pointed at the naked buttocks of scrawny Factory regular Mead, who does wriggle around like a burlesque star but not, alas, to the same erotic effect. The second features art critic and writer Gregory Battcock, an authority on the underground cinema movement of the ‘60s, seated before a camera and seeming utterly oblivious to the sex act ostensibly being performed upon him out of camera range. Only a phone call sparks his enthusiasm. It’s a sly, wry comment on impersonal sex, but only Warhol would turn it into an hour-plus long film. MOCA is nonetheless to be commended for presenting so comprehensive a survey of Warhol’s films. (213) 621-1745.