Rare views of an Italian master

Michelangelo Antonioni, modern master of alienation and longing, will receive a rare comprehensive retrospective at LACMA beginning Friday.

The series, which runs through Sept. 30, starts with Antonioni’s first feature, “Cronaca di un Amore” (1950), a masterly work that attests to the filmmaker’s maturity and detachment and contrasts sharply with Italy’s postwar Neorealist cinema. In its plot and sleek black-and-white cinematography, the film, released in the U.S. as “Story of a Love Affair,” recalls Hollywood noir. But its tone is contemplative, even existential, downplaying the inherent irony of its material and anticipating the ever more stylized and symbolic films to come.

Antonioni and a clutch of co-writers set the film in motion when a suave Milanese textile magnate (Ferdinando Sarmi) makes the mistake of hiring a detective to go on a fishing expedition into his wife’s past. Since she is a stunning woman in her 20s (Lucia Bose), her husband’s suspiciousness is understandable. But it has the unintended effect of propelling her back into the arms of the love of her life (Massimo Girotti, one of Italy’s most skilled leading men), from whom she parted years before because of a shared dark secret.

Reunited in passion -- and guilt -- the couple strive to work out their lives against the wife’s luxurious but stifling world. The wife, whose lavish wardrobe is the height of New Look glamour, becomes a study in complexity -- she is shrewd, amoral, insecure but all too aware of her position in contrast to her lover’s humble status. (Giovanni Fusco’s jazzy score underlines her mercurial moodiness.) In resisting easy irony, Antonioni is already striving toward something more profound.

The film is followed by “Red Desert” (1964), noted for Antonioni’s discovery of beautiful colors and images in an industrialized society. On Saturday, his 1960 masterpiece “L’Avventura” screens along with a program of early shorts, which reveal Neorealist social concerns as well as his elegant sense of composition.

Samurai stories

The American Cinematheque’s annual Japanese Outlaw Masters series returns Friday through Sunday at the Egyptian, with a one-day program Sept. 16 at the Aero.

Opening the retrospective is Hideo Gosha’s assured and stylish, but rarely seen, debut feature, “Three Outlaw Samurai” (1964). Roving samurai Sakon Shiba (Tetsuro Tamba) happens upon a mill where three farmers, barely staving off starvation, have in desperation kidnapped the daughter of the local magistrate because he has refused to lessen harsh taxes in the face of poor crops.

Shiba throws in his lot with the peasants, as in time do two other samurai, but complications escalate rapidly because the clan lord and his entourage are due to pass through the area. The magistrate must resolve the crisis in order not to lose face and also to prevent the peasants from pressing their case directly to the lord.

Gosha really knows how to pile on the incidents, through which he is able to express a sly, darkly humorous sense of absurdity and a passionate commitment to justice, all the while working in lots of razzle-dazzle swordplay.

“Three Outlaw Samurai” will be followed by Gosha’s “Goyokin.” A 1969 film of stunning beauty and power set in 1831, it is an attack on the feudal code. Tatsuya Nakadai, a Gosha regular and the most reflective of screen heroes, plays a samurai who renounces his clan after his brother-in-law (Tamba) has led a slaughter of an entire village of fishermen who retrieved a fortune in gold from a ship that had sunk on its way to the headquarters of the shogun.

Kihachi Okamoto’s “Kill!,” screening Saturday, is one of the gifted “Sword of Doom” director’s lesser efforts, but it is followed by Masahiro Shinoda’s richly stylized and rapidly paced “Assassination” (1964), which unfolds with the dynamic rhythm and stark imagery of a modern dance. It is set in 1863, with samurai Tamba enlisted to help shore up the crumbling 300-year-old shogunate against forces eager to restore the emperor to power. Why Tamba would seemingly be willing to aid a corrupt regime generates an aura of mystery and suspense in this intricate, satisfying film.

The evening’s third feature is the 1964 yakuza thriller “Wolves, Pigs & People,” unavailable for preview, by often outrageous cult director Kinji Fukasaku.

Sunday brings two more rarities: Okamoto’s satirical 1967 “Age of Assassins,” in which Nakadai plays a nerd-turned-suave agent charged with saving Japan from a population explosion, followed by “Branded to Kill” (1967), Seijun Suzuki’s nightmarish tale about a hit man (Jo Shishido) who botches a job.

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Screenings

Antonioni retrospective

* ‘Cronaca di un Amore’ and ‘The Red Desert’: 7:30 p.m. Friday

* ‘L’Avventura’: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Bing Theater at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

Info: (323) 857-6010

Japanese Outlaw Masters

* ‘Three Outlaw Samurai’ and ‘Goyokin’: 7:30 p.m. Friday

* ‘Kill!’: 5 p.m. Saturday

* ‘Assassination’ and ‘Wolves, Pigs & People’: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

* ‘Age of Assassins’ and ‘Branded to Kill’: 6 p.m. Sunday

Where: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-3456