UCLA offers a rare look back at post-Reich German film

The UCLA Film Archive’s “After the War, Before the Wall: German Cinema 1945-1960” series offers a rare glimpse into how Germany’s filmmakers dealt with the Third Reich and its aftermath and the economic miracle of the ‘50s. The New German Cinema movement, which began in the early ‘60s, dismissed the postwar-era filmmakers, yet their best work has stood the test of time.

The retrospective commences Saturday with “In Those Days” (1951), directed by Helmut Kautner; he and Wolfgang Staudte were the leading West German filmmakers of the era, and their films sometimes made it to American screens.

“In Those Days” opens in the rubble of Berlin, where two men in an auto junkyard are stripping a once-elegant sports car of its usable parts. The car then begins to tell its story from the day Adolf Hitler was named chancellor, Jan. 30, 1933.

Through seven vignettes, we witness the humanity of a wide range of individuals rising above the all-pervasive evil of the Third Reich. Kautner’s touch throughout is subtle, deft and gallant.

When her first trip to Hollywood didn’t work out, the stunning Hildegarde Knef returned to West Germany to create a sensation in Willi Forst’s “The Sinner” (1951), which screens after “In Those Days.”

In essence it is like the big Hollywood women’s pictures of the era, a fevered melodrama of love and redemption, but told with European sophistication and revealing of the corrupting influence of the Third Reich and its aftermath. Knef”s Marie is a strikingly glamorous Munich prostitute who falls for a talented but tormented artist (Gustave Frohlich) with a brain tumor and whose life can be saved, perhaps only temporarily, by a risky operation. Forst pulls out all the stops and Knef, who became an international legend, transforms kitsch into art before our very eyes.

Sunday at 7:30 p.m. brings one of the era’s rare international hits, Rolf Thiele’s “Rosemarie” (1958), based on an actual scandal that had rocked West Germany only one year earlier. Rosemarie (Nadja Tiller) is an ambitious prostitute who shares a Frankfurt basement apartment with a pair of street musicians with whom she sometime sings and who serve as a Greek chorus, making a biting commentary on Rosemarie’s progress in their Brecht-Weill-like songs.

This device sets the film’s sharp satirical tone as Rosemarie moves from the basement to a high-rise luxury apartment, set up by a suave, unscrupulous businessman (Peter Van Eyck) to become an industrial spy, taping the pillow talk of her clientele, a group of men who form a cartel playing a major role in the economic miracle. Rosemarie, however, remains vulnerable beneath her metallic surface and brazen ways in her craving for social acceptability via marriage to one of her tycoons. Thiele’s film is a timelessly terse and unsentimental work.

“Rosemarie” will be followed by “Roses Bloom on the Grave in the Meadow” (1952), a rural drama about a young woman raped by a farmer.

Laemmle Theaters’ outstanding Spring Documentary Days series concludes with Karim Dridi’s infectious “Cuba Feliz,” in which Dridi and his small crew follow the veteran Havana singer-guitarist Miguel Del Morales, known as El Gallo, on a series of musical encounters with other musicians across Cuba.

The result captures the gallant and creative spirit of the Cuban people in a graceful and beguiling manner.

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Screenings

“In Those Days” and “The Sinner”: James Bridges Theatre, Melnitz Hall, UCLA, Westwood. Saturday, 7:30 p.m. (310) 206-3456.

“Rosemarie” and “Roses Bloom on the Grave in the Meadow”: James Bridges Theatre, UCLA. Sunday, 7:30 p.m.

“Cuba Feliz”: Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m., (323) 848-3500. Also at the Monica 4-Plex, Santa Monica, April 26 and 27, (310) 394-9741; the Playhouse 7, Pasadena, May 3 and 4, (626) 844-6500; and the Fallbrook 7, West Hills, May 10 and 11, (818) 340-8710.