LACMA Series to Honor Films of Satyajit Ray

LACMA is presenting “Out of India: The Films of Satyajit Ray,” a long-overdue retrospective, surely the most comprehensive presented locally, of the work of one of the major figures in world cinema.

Ray was a Calcutta advertising agency art director and book illustrator whose life was transformed when he began creating drawings for the novel “Pather Panchali” (Song of the Open Road), an epic tale of the rural childhood and subsequent urban officer worker existence of Apu. He was eventually able to turn this coming-of-age story of a Bengali Everyman into a classic film trilogy, which established his international renown when the first part was shown at Cannes in 1956.

Ray would range far in his depiction of life in India, and a decade after his death, he remains by far the most famous Indian filmmaker. His every picture is a rewarding and notable accomplishment.

The series begins tonight at 7:30 in Bing Theater with “The Chess Players” (1977), in which two games are going on simultaneously. On the one hand a pair of indolent, foolish aristocrats (Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey) are so consumed with their nonstop chess matches they don’t see the larger struggle brewing all around them in Lucknow in 1856. The British East India Co., represented by Gen. Outram (Richard Attenborough), is about to take control of Lucknow, as it has nine other Indian states, from Lucknow’s leader (Amjac Khan), an indifferent ruler but a gifted poet and musician.

While Kumar and Jaffrey play chess as if it were war, Khan parries ineffectually with Attenborough, his passivity further enraging the colonial general, making it easier for him to rationalize the drastic step he is about to take. More interested in revealing character and culture than in passing judgment, Ray evokes a vanished way of life in this exquisite period film and in doing so suggests ever so deftly that it is not Khan but the world that is out of joint.

“Pather Panchali” (1955) screens Friday at 7:30 p.m., followed by the intimate “Two Daughters” (1961), and Saturday brings at 7:30 p.m. “Charulata” (The Lonely Wife, 1964) and “Kanchenjungha” (1962).

In “Charulata” Ray takes us into the languorous world of the Indian aristocracy in the late 19th century. Beautiful Madhabi Mukherjee stars as the childless wife of a wealthy, well-educated Bengali, whose determination not to be one of the idle rich has tragic consequences. The film is a highly cinematic, evocative study in mood and character and is concerned with women’s liberation--and by extension India’s own need for self-determination.

Although the remarkable “Kanchenjungha” deals with a familiar Ray theme, the painful emergence of modern India, it stands largely apart from the rest of the director’s work. Set in the British-founded mountain resort of Darjeeling, which reflects the film’s cosmopolitan character, the story takes place in the town’s beautiful park, Observatory Hill.

On the last afternoon of its stay, the large family of a powerful Bengali financier takes a stroll that leads to a series of encounters for its members, each of whom comes face to face with himself or herself, especially the tyrannical patriarch who finds his implacable authority challenged. The film takes its name from the snowy peak that overlooks Darjeeling and can serve as a symbol of the aspirations of India’s younger generation. (323) 857-6010.

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The Laemmle Theaters’ “Documentary Days” continues Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5 with Wieland Speck and Andrea Weiss’ illuminating “Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story.” The film combines brief dramatized sequences and well-researched documentary materials to chart the tumultuous and entangled lives of Thomas Mann’s two eldest children. Both of them were apparently gay, as well as talented and courageous in their effort not to be intimidated by their father’s stature and in their determination to combat rising fascism. The vivacious, attractive Erika established an anti-Nazi cabaret before being forced into exile--but not before taking her show on tour across Europe. Klaus launched several important literary journals, and both became tireless journalists and lecturers, especially after coming to the U.S. in 1936.

Though Erika flourished until her death in Switzerland in 1969, Klaus, who had served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, eventually gave into despair, intensified by drug addiction, and committed suicide in 1949. Erika, driven from the U.S. with the advent of the McCarthy era witch hunts, thereupon devoted her efforts to seeing her brother’s work published, including his novel “Mephisto,” inspired by the life and career of Erika’s first husband, celebrated actor Gustaf Grundgens, who flourished during the Third Reich. (W.H. Auden subsequently married Erika so that she could establish British citizenship.)

“Escape to Life” suggests that despite the adversities and uncertainties of their times and their own mercurial temperaments, Erika and Klaus managed to lead lives of substantial accomplishment.

Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles: (323) 848-3500. The film will screen April 6 and 7 at 11 a.m. at the Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741; April 13 and 14 at the Playhouse 7, 673 Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 844-6500; and April 27 and 28 at the Lido, 3459 Via Lido, Newport Beach ,(949) 673-8350.

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“Documental,” the documentary and experimental film and video series at the Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, will present two programs Saturday at 7 and 9 p.m.

Screening in the second program is Marjorie Chodorov’s engaging “El Rey de Rock ‘n’ Roll,” about Robert Lopez, a Mexican American who grew up not in a barrio but as a surfer dude in a San Diego suburb and subsequently became the venturesome curator of the La Luz de Jesus Gallery when it was on Melrose.

When an Elvis impersonator he hired for a gallery opening proved inept, Lopez thought he could do it himself. He also saw in the possibility of a Latino Elvis a way of celebrating Mexican popular culture and making political and social commentary--he freely revised lyrics of the Presley standards--while putting on a dazzling, amusing high-energy show, backed by his Elvette chorus girls and accompanied by his Memphis Mariachis.

A reflective, low-key man off stage, Lopez becomes a dynamo on stage. Far from being yet another Elvis impersonator, Lopez sees himself as a translator and his El Vez as a symbol of possibilities for Mexican Americans. (310) 393-2923.

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When visionary architect Glen Howard Small asked his daughter to write a book about his work if he failed to do it himself before he died, she proposed to make a documentary about him instead (see story, Page 38). The revealing result, “My Father, the Genius,” which the American Cinematheque screens tonight at 7:30 at the Egyptian, is at once a portrait of a visionary whose arrogance resulted in professional and personal alienation. Small, one of the founders of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, struggles to survive in semi-obscurity.

While Small, now in his early 60s, welcomes the chance to expound upon his design theories, his daughter, one of three he virtually deserted when they were infants, has an another agenda. She explores his errant personal life, which is marked by an inability to have an enduring relationship with anything but his work. Small is a crusty individualist but not without humor, and “My Father, the Genius” arrives at a place that surprises father and daughter alike.

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“Side Streets and Back Alleys,” the American Cinematheque’s fourth annual “Festival of Film Noir,” opens Friday, running through April 14. One of the Cinematheque’s most popular offerings, featuring many personal appearances by stars and filmmakers, begins at 7 p.m. with “The Naked City” (1948), a classic police procedural thriller, set in Manhattan and directed by Jules Dassin and written by Malvin Wald. Barry Fitzgerald and Howard Duff star; Wald will appear after the screening.

At 9:30 there will be a Robert Siodmak double feature, “Phantom Lady” (1944), starring Ella Raines as a plucky young woman searching for a missing woman who can save her boss from execution. Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, It holds up better than “Christmas Holiday” (1945), based on a Somerset Maugham story and of greatest interest for casting two musical stars against type. Lovely, naive Deanna Durbin falls for Gene Kelly, charming but dangerous scion of an old New Orleans family, destroyed by the high expectations of his ultra-possessive mother (Gale Sondergaard, way over the top). It’s a creaky ‘40s psychological drama at heart, but Siodmak gets good straight dramatic performances from Durbin and Kelly. (323) 466-FILM.