Intense descent toward madness

By Kevin Thomas

April 14, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Teinosuke Kinugasa’s much-cited 1927 experimental narrative “A Page of Madness” will get a rare screening tonight at REDCAT. It opens the “Synaesthesia” series, which calls attention to collaborations between filmmakers and composers, and runs through Sunday.

Kinugasa is best known for the 1953 period drama “Gate of Hell,” hailed as one of the most beautiful color films of all time upon its international release, but “A Page of Madness” is a landmark in avant-garde cinema that deserves to be as well known as “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” Filmed without intertitles, “A Page of Madness,” also known as “A Crazy Page,” reveals the torment of a modern dancer (Yoshie Nakagawa) and that of her husband (Masao Inoue), who has become a custodian at the mental institution where his wife is a longtime patient.

So intensely does the husband desire his wife’s release that he seems to begin to lose his mind. His desperation propels the film through its torrent of harrowing, fragmented, high-contrast images, which will be accompanied by an intense and jagged score by International Metal Supply’s Jean-Pierre Bedoyan and Paul B. Cutler.

Corporate greed

Costa-Gavras’ masterful “The Ax,” which screens as part of the City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival at the Directors Guild, has a film noir opening. But its suspense develops from the familiar predicament of a well-regarded 41-year-old French paper-industry design engineer (Jose Garcia) who loses his job in a downsizing. As time passes and Garcia’s Bruno fails to land a job in his field, he embarks on a desperate course that allows Costa-Gavras, in adapting a Donald Westlake novel, to make a commentary on corporate greed, the fragility of the middle class and the ruthlessness of contemporary Western society. Costa-Gavras will answer questions after the film.

A woman obsessed

Xu Jinglei’s ravishing, elegant “Letter From an Unknown Woman,” inspired by the Stefan Zweig short story that was the basis of the Max Ophuls 1948 masterpiece, will be shown as part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s Contemporary Mainland Chinese Film series that runs Saturday to May 7.

An inspired reworking that invites myriad interpretations, “Letter” stars Xu, first as an impoverished 13-year-old who becomes romantically obsessed with a famous playboy-writer (Jiang Wen) who moves into a lavish house across from her tiny apartment. In 1930, the girl rebuffs a choice arranged marriage, goes to college and crosses paths with the writer, ending up with a child to raise by herself. Then as a glamorous Peking courtesan she has another tryst with the writer, who doesn’t remember her.

Now at a dead end in 1948, the woman, still essentially unknown to the writer, tells all in a letter to him. Martyr, masochist, fool -- that’s for the viewer to decide, but Xu’s Unknown Woman commands respect for her proud fidelity to the obsession that has sustained her for 18 of her 31 years, and recalls Truffaut’s like-minded Adele H.

Indian film fest

The third annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles will run Wednesday through April 24 at the ArcLight with a program of 30 films. The opening-night gala is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Black,” an over-the-top reworking of “The Miracle Worker” that finds a present-day Helen Keller (Rani Mukherjee) praying she will be reunited with the teacher (Amitabh Bachchan) who penetrated her world of darkness. More appealing -- and lots less dated -- is the closing-night selection, Bharatbala Ganapathy’s sunny romantic adventure “Hari Om.” In the title role, Vijay Raaz plays a happy-go-lucky Jaipur auto rickshaw driver hired by Isa (Camille Natt), a Frenchwoman, to show her the sights. When she misses her train -- with her pompous boyfriend (Jean-Marie Lamour) aboard -- she hires Hari to try to catch up with it, which dovetails neatly with his need to go on the lam. At 111 minutes “Hari Om” is too long, but should this film find U.S. distribution, it would be easy to trim.

Note: At 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday in Royce Hall, UCLA Live presents a program of five whimsical animated shorts by Ladislaw Starewicz. Made between 1911 and 1925, they feature anthropomorphized, exquisitely drawn insects -- and a frog. They will be accompanied by the jaunty, plaintive scores of the Tin Hat Quartet, which will perform in person. (310) 825-2101.

Screenings

REDCAT

* “A Page of Madness”: 8:30 tonight

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 2nd and Hope streets, L.A.

Info: (213) 237-2800

City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival

* “The Ax”: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Info: (310) 289-5336

Contemporary Mainland Chinese Film at UCLA

* “Letter From an Unknown Woman”: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: James Bridges Theatre, Melnitz Hall, UCLA