When action spoke louder than words

In addition to such landmark films as Jean Renoir’s “Nana” and Fritz Lang’s “Spies,” the UCLA Film Archive’s International Preservation series includes a wide variety of rarities, even a 1917 John Ford film, “Bucking Broadway.”

Screening with “Bucking Broadway” Saturday is “The Devil’s Circus” (1926), which is heavy with the Victorian melodrama of so many silents yet is still enjoyable thanks to the sophistication and rich pictorial sense of Danish director Benjamin Christiansen. In his view, humans are but puppets at the mercy of the devil. Yet there is the possibility of redemption through love and faith in God.

Somewhere in Europe just before World War I, an innocent country girl (Norma Shearer) and a city slicker (Charles Emmett Mack), disarmed by her virtue, become menaced by a diabolical lion tamer (John Miljan) at a circus where the girl has sought work. In attracting the lion tamer’s attention, she incites the jealousy of the show’s star (Carmel Myers).

Shearer was on her way to becoming a major star, but Christiansen, after several frustrating years in Hollywood, returned home.

Probably no picture had so many collaborators who went on to become famous Hollywood directors and writers than “People on Sunday” (1929), which screens Wednesday. Directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, who were to become noir masters, from a script by Billy Wilder, Siodmak and Siodmak’s writer brother Curt, this startlingly fresh and modern film was photographed by the illustrious Eugen Schufftan, whose camera assistant was none other than Fred Zinnemann.

Subtitled “A Film Without Actors,” the collaborators rounded up five people to play themselves on a summer Sunday, which is framed with the activities of countless other Berliners on their day off. Siodmak, Ulmer et al. trust in their powers of observation to reveal human nature rather than conventional plot development.

When his model girlfriend, Annie Schreyer, sleeps in, beefy taxi driver Erwin Splettstosser goes off to Lake Nicholas outside Berlin with his pal Wolfgang von Waltershausen, a wine salesman who has lined up pretty movie extra Christl Ehlers. She in turn has brought along her friend Brigitte Borchert, a blond record store clerk.

Against a glorious evocation of a bustling, elegant Berlin and then an unspoiled countryside, “People on Sunday” depicts an outing in which the men attempt a casual seduction of the women.

“People on Sunday” is paired with Anthony Asquith’s “Underground,” also a late silent dealing with the lives of ordinary people. London subway porter Brian Aherne and department store clerk Elissa Landi discover each other at the moment she attracts rakish power plant electrician Cyril McLaglen, a virile Clive Owen type.

“Underground” has terrific visual flair, revealing at times the influence of German Expressionism and even Soviet montage. McLaglen’s job allows for a grand climactic sequence in a vast London powerhouse.

Second chances

Outfest 05 has concluded, but the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival has wasted no time in repeating some programs for its regular American Cinematheque Outfest Wednesdays at the Egyptian.

Next week’s offering is “Boys’ Shorts,” composed of seven short films, several of which are outstanding. The most sophisticated is Eldar Rapaport’s “Postmortem,” a subtle and well-nuanced vignette in which a man who walked out on the man who loved him has returned two years later, hoping for a second chance.

Jamie Donahue’s “Billy’s Dad ...” mimics perfectly an inane “educational film” of the ‘50s extolling the virtues of a rigidly conformist family life -- except that its narration and dialogue are subversively loaded with outrageous innuendo.

Luther M. Mace’s “On the Low” focuses wryly on a gay African American high school student caught up in a secret affair with a popular athlete on a macho, homophobic campus. Adam Salky’s “Dare” offers a deft sketch of a shy student (Adam Fleming) with a crush on a popular school rebel. Nick Wauters’ “Ryan’s Life” takes a lighthearted look at a high school student (Alex Pakzad) strenuously denying but finally accepting that he is in fact gay.

Less effective are Jim Cashman’s ultra-short “Dinner Conversation,” in which two men struggle to deny that they have fallen in love on the third date, and Keith Dando’s “Spaceboy,” in which a rural English youth gets an unexpected thrill when an American astronaut crash-lands near his home.

*

Screenings

UCLA’s International Preservation series

“Bucking Broadway” and “The Devil’s Circus”: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

“People on Sunday” and “Underground”: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: James Bridges Theater, 1409 Melnitz Hall, UCLA Campus, Westwood

Info: (310) 206-8013; www.cinema.ucla.edu

Outfest Wednesdays

“Boys’ Shorts”: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-3456