Other places, other times

By Kevin Thomas

March 3, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The American Cinematheque’s Les Classiques du Cinema showcase will present the Los Angeles premiere of Czech director Frantisek Vlacil’s “Marketa Lazarova” (1967) tonight at the Egyptian. It’s the kind of highly stylized folkloric saga that’s artistically worthy of a Cinematheque slot. But it is nonetheless heavy going because it is so difficult to follow, much like the recent “The Fall of Otrar.”

Dynamic and passionate, it is a stark 13th century saga, set in a time of Christian and pagan conflict. It opens in a wintry landscape, where the ambush of a count leads to a heady lust-at-first-sight encounter between Mikolas Kozlik (Josef Kemr) and sultry Marketa Lazarova (Magda Vasaryova). But wouldn’t you know? The Kozliks and the Lazars are rival clans.

Kenji Mizoguchi

The Cinematheque’s Elegies of Moonlight and Rain: The Cinema of Kenji Mizoguchi, which runs Friday through March 12, calls attention to one of Japan’s greatest directors. Mizoguchi (1898-1956) was a master of the period film who was concerned with the plight of women through the ages. In this regard, he cannot be mentioned apart from the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka, who appeared in several of his finest films, three of which are included in this series.

In “Ugetsu” (1953), which opens the series Friday, Tanaka is a potter’s wife whose husband forsakes her for Machiko Kyo’s beguilingly beautiful ghost. In “Sansho the Bailiff” (1954), she is an aristocratic lady kidnapped and imprisoned, so brutally treated that she no longer recognizes her son when, years later, he finally manages to rescue her. And in “Life of Oharu” (1952) she portrays a sheltered lady-in-waiting gradually but remorselessly descending to streetwalking. One of Mizoguchi’s most important works, this film remains unforgettable for Tanaka’s quiet assertion of human dignity in the face of desperate circumstances.

One of Mizoguchi’s most characteristic films, “Story of the Last Chrysanthemums” (1939), finds a young servant girl (Kakuko Mori) with a selfless love for a young Kabuki actor (Shotaro Hanayagi). Only she dares to tell him, the scion of a prestigious acting family, how bad an actor he really is -- only to be fired by his parents, who are suspicious of her motives.

“Osaka Elegy” (1936) reveals the hypocrisy and rejection a young woman (Isuzu Yamada) suffers on behalf of her family. Yamada plays a telephone operator at a pharmaceutical company who becomes the mistress of the company president in order to bail her father out of embezzlement, only to confront the double standard at its most virulent.

On the screen, half a century separates the distant-seeming gossamer world of “Story of the Last Chrysanthemums” and the chic, hard-edged Art Deco interiors and skyscrapers of “Osaka Elegy,” but Mizoguchi suggests that the lot of the self-sacrificing Japanese woman has changed only superficially in that period.

Mizoguchi, who attained international renown toward the end of his life, made his last film, “Streets of Shame,” in 1956. It is a gritty evocation of the hard lot of prostitutes in postwar Japan, and it opened during the debates in the Diet (parliament) that resulted in the outlawing of prostitution.

Agnes Varda

On Wednesday the Cinematheque will premiere Agnes Varda’s “Cinevardaphoto” at the Egyptian. It is composed of her new 44-minute “Ydessa, the Bears, Etc., Etc,” the 22-minute “Ulysse” (1982) and the 30-minute “Salut les Cubains” (1963).

“Ydessa” documents wealthy Toronto collector-curator-artist Ydessa Hendeles’ 2003 exhibition of a collection of 1,000 anonymous vintage photos, each of which contains a teddy bear in a wide range of contexts. Displayed at Munich’s Haus der Kunst, it is a provocative show, which Hendeles calls “a narrative that explores memory.” Because her parents were Holocaust survivors and lost all family memorabilia -- except for a single photo of Hendeles’ grandmother -- it also reflects her lack of a personal visual memory.

The story of “Ulysse” goes back to May 9, 1954 -- the day Dien Bien Phu fell -- when Varda took a photograph at an Egyptian beach of a nude man looking out into the sea, a little boy to his right looking at a dead goat. In 1982, Varda interviewed the man, an art director at Elle, for his memories of that day, and also those of the boy, Ulysse Llorca, who became a Paris bookseller. Like “Ydessa,” it is a rich meditation on memory and meaning.

“Salut les Cubains,” cursed with white-on-white subtitles, celebrates the people of Cuba and also Castro and his revolution.

Bruce Weber

At the New Beverly Cinema, three Bruce Weber shorts -- “A Backyard Movie,” “Gentle Giants” and “The Teddy Boys of the Edwardian Draper Society” -- will accompany Weber’s “A Letter to True.” Weber will be at Wednesday’s screening.

At once seductive and nostalgic, the first two complement “A Letter to True,” which expresses the photographer-filmmaker’s love for his golden retrievers and his childhood but also considers the meaning of the life and work of war photographer Larry Burrows, who died in Laos in 1971.

“A Backyard Movie” intercuts clips of family home movies and a naked young athlete jumping on a trampoline with a dog and other images overlaid with words and memories of adolescence and youth. “Gentle Giants” refers both to dogs beloved by Weber and also Hollywood hunks of his youth. Elizabeth Taylor, Thelma Ritter and Lana Turner are other Weber favorites.

“Teddy Boys” records a dance held by young Englishmen emulating the ‘50s Teddy Boy styles , but heard on the soundtrack is Maria Callas singing Puccini’s “O mio babbino raro” followed by the sound of a car crash.

Screenings

Les Classiques

du Cinema

“Marketa Lazarova”: 7:30 p.m. tonight, Egyptian

Elegies of Moonlight and Rain: The Cinema of Kenji Mizoguchi

* “Ugetsu” and “Story of the Last Chrysanthemums”: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Egyptian

* “Life of Oharu”: 5 p.m. Saturday, Egyptian

* “Street of Shame”: 8 p.m.

Saturday, Egyptian

* “Sansho the Bailiff” and “Osaka Elegy”: 5 p.m. Sunday, Egyptian

Call for series schedule at the Aero.

Agnes Varda