‘Casanova’ seduces again

Restored by the Cinematheque Francaise, Alexandre Volkoff’s 1927 silent “Casanova,” a major rediscovery, was reintroduced to the world in January 1986 at UCLA’s Royce Hall, presented with a glorious new score performed live and conducted by its composer, the late Oscar-winning Georges Delerue. “Casanova” will be screened again at Royce Hall tonight at 8, accompanied by a 14-member orchestra performing Delerue’s score as part of a weeklong conference of the International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.

An audaciously cinematic epic of much style and sophistication, it offers a far more compassionate view of the 18th century Venetian rake, played with a mix of elan and poignancy by Ivan Mosjoukine, than does the icily elegant Fellini film.

Unseen in its uncut, 125-minute original version for more than 50 years before its 1986 restoration, it is episodic and sprawling in structure -- the kind of silent film that needs music to bring it alive, which is just what Delerue’s score accomplishes.

‘War’ tribute

The American Cinematheque’s fourth annual Festival of International Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction begins tonight at 7:30 at the Egyptian with a 50th anniversary cast and crew screening of “The War of the Worlds” as part of a mini-tribute to the late producer-director George Pal. Paramount has provided a beautiful new 35-millimeter print for the occasion.

Although the Oscar-winning special effects in this H.G. Wells tale of a Martian invasion might seem quaint alongside today’s ultrarealistic illusions, they are triumphs of cinema artistry and a tribute to resourcefulness.

A bullet-shaped, meteor-like object lands outside a small Southern California community. Amazingly, a hatch on the huge object’s crusty, red-hot exterior starts to unscrew slowly. What comes out won’t be revealed here. Coping the best they can are scientist Gene Barry, his pretty girlfriend Ann Robinson and Army Gen. Les Tremayne.

Along with fellow cast member Robert Cornthwaite, those actors will discuss the film after its screening.

Swedish ‘Songs’

The Laemmle Theaters’ “Around the World in Sixty Days” 11 a.m. weekend series continues with Robert Andersson’s “Songs From the Second Floor,” winner of a special jury prize at Cannes in 2000, an apocalyptic vision that is confounding, dazzling, darkly funny and decidedly wearying. In a series of surreal and absurdist vignettes Andersson envisions nothing less than the collapse of Western civilization -- not from military attack, epidemic or natural catastrophe but from some mysterious implosion that leads to an ever-widening stasis. If the film has a key figure it is the portly Kalle (Lars Nordh), who has burned down his store to collect the insurance only to find himself embarking upon a odyssey in which he discovers how hard it is to be human, which may well be the film’s theme. Four years in the making, “Songs From the Second Floor,” from Sweden, is corrosively critical of modern society -- but so elusive it is hard to remain focused on it.

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Screenings

“Casanova” (1927)

Royce Hall, UCLA. Today, 8 p.m. (310) 825-2101.

“The War of the Worlds”

6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, today, 7:30 p.m. (323) 466-FILM.

“Songs From the Second Floor”

Saturday and Sunday at the Fairfax Cinemas, (323) 655-4010; Aug. 16-17 at the Monica 4-Plex, (310) 394-9741; Aug. 23-24 at the Playhouse 7, Pasadena, (626) 844-6500; and Aug. 30, 31 and Sept. 1 at the Fallbrook 7, West Hills, (818) 340-8710.