Episodes from life in Italy

THE American Cinematheque’s Cinema Italian Style: New Films From Italy, which runs tonight through Oct. 16 at the Egyptian and Saturday through Oct. 13 at the Aero, opens with director Giovanni Veronesi introducing his box-office hit “Manuale d’Amore” (Love Manual), which revives the once popular episode film. After a sweet but familiar curtain-raiser about a love-struck youth’s pursuit of a beautiful girl, and then a tedious business about a couple in midlife crisis, the film hits a satisfying stride in its two longest episodes, inspired blends of comedy and pathos in the impassioned Italian tradition.

Luciana Littizzetto, with personality and energy to spare, plays a Rome traffic cop with the perfect profession with which to work off her revenge against men in the wake of her husband’s infidelity -- but then she herself fantasizes over a handsome newscaster. One of the cop’s victims, a middle-aged pediatrician (Carlo Verdone), is the central figure of the concluding sequence, a hard-working, polished man abandoned by his wife. His struggles to cope with his devastating loss result in hilarious misadventure, self-reconciliation and a fresh start.

Savoring silence

A treasure trove of silent cinema is coming. The UCLA Film Archive kicks off its Silent Horror series Saturday with Paul Leni bringing an Expressionist style to “The Cat and the Canary” (1927). (See story, Page 6.) Sony Pictures is releasing its Harold Lloyd retrospective of restored prints Friday through Oct. 17 at the Royal Theater. Info: (310) 477-5581.

And the Silent Movie, where Lloyd is a house favorite, will present a trio of Greta Garbo silents to celebrate the star’s centenary Sept. 18, with screenings this weekend of “The Mysterious Lady” (1928), “Love” (1927) and “The Kiss” (1929).

Fred Niblo, one of the silent era’s most versatile directors, brings just the right verve and sophistication to “The Mysterious Lady,” a heady brew of romance and intrigue set in pre-World War I Vienna and points eastward. Swathed in flowing Adrian gowns amid Cedric Gibbons’ elegant Continental decor and photographed luminously by her favorite cameraman, William Daniels, Garbo is a glorious femme fatale who discovers she has a heart. As a Russian of the utmost beauty and daring, she vamps an Austrian officer (Conrad Nagel) to steal documents on fortifications, thus allowing him to be branded a traitor -- only to realize that she has fallen for him as hard as he has for her.

“Love” teams Garbo with John Gilbert in a modern-dress version of “Anna Karenina.” Directed by Edmund Goulding, “Love” is surprisingly timeless, but it is being screened with its more popular Hollywood ending rather than the alternative ending that was true to Tolstoy.

Directed by Jacques Feyder, “The Kiss,” Garbo’s final silent and unavailable for preview, re-teams Garbo with Nagel, cast as her former lover and attorney defending her when she shoots her jealous husband (Anders Randolf) to save the life of a young man (Lew Ayres) who has become infatuated with her.

Artful animation

REDCAT will screen tonight through Saturday four programs in its New International Animation series. Opening the program tonight is Toe Yuen’s “My Life as McDull,” a feature based on Alice Mak’s cartoons about a piglet’s revealing adventures in Hong Kong. The film is sufficiently imaginative to be worth dubbing into English to make it more accessible, as its subtitles are unusually distracting from its images.

Among the offerings in the Friday program, composed of highlights from the recent Annecy animation festival, is Gaelle Denis’ eerie “City Paradise,” in which a young Japanese woman has a strange experience at a London swimming pool. The imagination, imagery and design in this film are typical of the high level of artistic achievement in REDCAT’s series.

In Saturday afternoon’s free five-film Unbridled Imagination program, Mike Hollands’ “Pinata” tells in vivid colors the rueful plight of a donkey-shaped pinata that happens to be alive and therefore forced to submit to constant battering by children with sticks.

Most of the selections for preview were from Saturday evening’s Phantoms and Dreams program, composed of nine short films. Of special note is Mark Craste’s “JoJo in the Stars,” in which Craste evokes an ominous “Metropolis”-like city-state on a remote planet inhabited by robot-like creatures. The citizens flock to an arena whose sinister proprietor, Madame Pica, becomes dangerously jealous when her star attraction, the winged, silver-plated trapeze artist JoJo, falls in love with one of her fans. This computer-generated film has the look and feeling of a fatalistic romantic silent movie and is drenched in pathos. Vuk Jevremovic’s pulsating, luminous “Faces” imagines the faces of classical statuary in a gallery as they come alive in the artist’s imagination through his preliminary sketches and paintings.

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Screenings

Cinema Italian Style

* “Manuale d’Amore”: 7:30 tonight

Where: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-FILM

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Silent Garbo

* “The Mysterious Lady”: 8 p.m. Friday

* “Love”: 8 p.m. Saturday

* “The Kiss”: 8 p.m. Sunday

Where: Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

Info: (323) 655-2520

New International Animation

When: 8 p.m. today through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday

Where: REDCAT, Walt Disney Concert Hall, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A.

Info: (213) 237-2800