A life full of wine, women and painting

The highlight of Contemporary Classics of the Korean Cinema, which presents six features Friday through Sunday at USC, is its concluding film, “Chihwaeseon,” a masterwork by South Korea’s leading veteran filmmaker, Im Kwon-Taek, who will be present screening. Im won the 2002 best director prize at Cannes for this compelling work revealing the formidable challenges Jang Seung-up, later known as Ohwon (a forceful Cho Min-sik), overcame as a low-born iconoclast to become widely heralded amid Korea’s late-19th century unrest.

In his struggle to pursue painting, Ohwon was influenced by the Chinese watercolor masters and achieved fame as “the drunken master of painting” (a translation of the film’s title). In this exquisite, demanding film, Im would seem to embrace with a camera Ohwon’s own precepts as he held his brush: “Paint not the object but the thought it evokes.”

If Im is a classicist, Hong Sang-soo is emerging as one of South Korea’s most original younger directors. His “Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” on Saturday recalls the French New Wave in its wry, graceful take on sex and love, black-and-white print and Godard-like punctuations. But the film is all Hong’s: a developing triangle divided into five chapters that move back and forth in time. There’s also a revealing switch between the point of view of the woman (Lee Eun-ju) and the two men, one gentle and romantic (Jeong Bo-seok), the other (Mun Seong-kun) married and forceful.

The tone begins on a humorous note but grows darker as we discover how awkward romance can be. The UCLA Film and Television Archive’s Halloween treat is the lush 1943 Technicolor version of “The Phantom of the Opera” tonight. Claude Rains is a heartbreaking phantom in a splendid period production directed with panache by Arthur Lubin. Jack Hazan’s shimmeringly beautiful “A Bigger Splash,” presented by the American Cinematheque, is a captivating re-enactment of a crisis in the life of painter David Hockney in which all involved play themselves. This 1974 film is at once the record of the artist’s painful loss of a lover and its impact on his work, and a witty observation of his milieu. The film becomes a homage, emulating the artist’s direct, simple but finally enigmatic style.

*

Screenings

“Chihwaeseon”

Sunday, 7 p.m.; USC’s Norris Theater.

“Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors”

Saturday, 6 p.m.; USC’s Norris Theater, 3535 S. Figueroa St., L.A.; (213) 821-1297.

“The Phantom of the Opera”

Tonight, 7:30 p.m.; Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue, Westwood; (310) 206-FILM.

“A Bigger Splash”

Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.; the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; (323) 461-FILM.