A master Kazan and rare revivals

By Susan King

April 13, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

THE Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s four-week Elia Kazan retrospective continues Friday and Saturday with the director’s 1954 masterwork, “On the Waterfront,” as well as the rarely revived “Panic in the Streets,” “Boomerang!” and “Viva Zapata!”

“Panic in the Streets,” which screens Friday, is a riveting 1950 thriller shot in New Orleans. Richard Widmark, taking a welcome break from his villain roles, stars as a doctor for the Public Health Service who discovers that a murdered illegal immigrant was carrying pneumonic plague. A bloodthirsty hoodlum and his friends had killed the man after he won too much money in a card game.

To stop an epidemic, Widmark’s Dr. Clint Reed must track down the killers and their associates and inoculate them without the public knowing about the potential outbreak. The underrated Paul Douglas plays the police captain who helps Reed. Zero Mostel and Barbara Bel Geddes also star; Kazan hired numerous local residents to appear in minor roles and as extras.

The film won the Oscar for best writing, motion picture story.

Rounding out the evening is 1947’s gritty “Boomerang!,” starring Dana Andrews as a prosecutor who fights eyewitness testimony to prove a man innocent of murdering a priest in a small Connecticut town.

Jane Wyatt and Lee J. Cobb also star in the film, which was shot entirely in Stamford, Conn. Just as with “Panic,” Kazan used nonactors for the majority of the roles. Richard Murphy received an Oscar nomination for his taut screenplay. “Boomerang!” was released the same year as Kazan’s multi-Oscar-winning drama “Gentleman’s Agreement.”

“On the Waterfront,” which won several Academy Awards, including best film, director, screenplay, actor (Marlon Brandon) and supporting actress (Eva Marie Saint), screens Saturday along with the 1952 historical drama “Viva Zapata!”

The Nebraska-born Brando plays Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary of the early 20th century who led a rebellion against the corrupt leadership of President Porfirio Diaz.

Though casting someone like Brando would not be politically correct today, there’s no denying the power of his performance, for which he received an Oscar nomination for best actor as well as best actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival.

Anthony Quinn as his traitorous brother Eufemio steals the film. Quinn won the Oscar for best supporting actor. Jean Peters also stars in the story penned by John Steinbeck.

Gaynor love stories

Among the highlights of the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s “Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration” this week are two bucolic romances starring the first Oscar-winning actress -- 1933’s “State Fair” and 1935’s “The Farmer Takes a Wife,” which screen Saturday evening at the James Bridges Theater.

“The Farmer Takes a Wife” is better known today as the film that marked Henry Fonda’s screen debut than as a Gaynor vehicle. Fonda reprises his Broadway role as a shy young man who takes a job on an Erie Canal boat to earn money for a farm. He falls head over heels in love with a diminutive, feisty young cook (Gaynor) who works on another canal boat. Charles Bickford plays her boss, a hard-drinking man who dreams of marrying her. Margaret Hamilton, who would come to fame four years later as the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” also reprised her stage role as a friend of Gaynor’s. Victor Fleming (“Gone With the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz”) directed.

Henry King directed Gaynor to one of her spunkiest performances in the charming “State Fair.” Gaynor plays a young woman living on a rural Iowa farm who is looking for romance. And she finds it when she meets a handsome young reporter (Lew Ayres) at the Iowa State Fair.

“State Fair,” which was nominated for the Academy Award for best film, also stars legendary humorist Will Rogers as her father, who is obsessed with his prize hog, Blue Boy. Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers remade “State Fair” in 1945 as a musical -- it was the team’s only original movie musical.

An ‘essay film’

“Lottery of the Sea,” screening at REDCAT on Monday evening, is definitely not for the traditionalist -- it’s a languidly paced three-hour “essay film” by photographer and film/video-maker Allan Sekula. Shot over five years in the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Japan and other maritime countries, the film explores Sekula’s two obsessions: globalization and the sea. Sekula, who narrates the film, will appear at the screening.

Garfield film noir

John Garfield was the perfect film noir antihero -- tough, sexy and dangerous, but as vulnerable as a kitten when it came to the fairer sex. On Friday, the American Cinematheque’s 8th Annual Film Noir Festival features Garfield in the rarely shown 1946 thriller “Nobody Lives Forever.”

Though not on a par with classic Garfield noirs such as “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Force of Evil,” this Jean Negulesco-directed crime melodrama boasts a nifty script penned by W.R. Burnett of “Little Caesar” and “The Asphalt Jungle” fame.

Garfield plays a former con man and World War II vet involved in a plan to fleece a war widow (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Of course, the two fall in love, which doesn’t sit well with Garfield’s gang.

Also screening Friday evening is Robert Wise’s effective 1951 woman-in-peril thriller, “The House on Telegraph Hill.”

Screenings

The Films of Elia Kazan

* “Panic in the Streets” and “Boomerang!”: 7:30 p.m. Friday

* “On the Waterfront” and “Viva Zapata!”: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

Info: (323) 857-6000, www.lacma.org

Janet Gaynor series

* “The Farmer Takes a Wife” and “State Fair”: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

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

Info: (310) 206-3456, www.cinema.ucla.edu

REDCAT