Innovative in any era

By Kevin Crust

Jan. 19, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

THE rarely screened German film “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” which will be shown Sunday at REDCAT, is considered to be the first animated film of at least one hour in length. Lotte Reiniger was only 23 when she began the wondrous, hallucinatory film based on “The Arabian Nights: Tales From a Thousand and One Nights,” using a unique method of handmade cutouts silhouetted against illuminated glass. The mesmerizing film premiered in 1926, but the technique was largely forgotten and overshadowed by the character-based cel animation popularized by Walt Disney, Max and Dave Fleischer and Warner Bros.

The travails of Prince Achmed as he struggles against the shape-shifting sorcerer play out with a stunning fluidity. The inky silhouettes move and transform with a kaleidoscopic elegance against tinted backdrops, and the filigreed intertitles (in German with English subtitles) provide narration to the silent story. Wolfgang Zeller’s orchestral score will be replaced by a live performance from the experimental music ensemble Otocine. The group’s jazzy, discordant sounds, created with conventional instruments, objects and recorded material, promise to add a haunting sonic backdrop to Reiniger’s images.

Suffering teen

The solemn foreboding of Robert Bresson’s 1967 film “Mouchette,” screening this weekend at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, leads one to silently hope for a savior of some kind. The filmmaker, however, ascribes an inevitability to the plight of a teenage girl in a rural French village that allows no space for miracles. Mouchette, played with exquisite sadness by Nadine Nortier, lives with her family -- her dying mother (Maria Cardinal), abusive father (Paul Hebert), a brother and a baby -- in a veritable shack, and bears the responsibilities of an adult while experiencing none of the joys of childhood.

Her innocence has been replaced by a blankness as she is unremittingly tormented by family, classmates and townspeople. The worse the abuse, the more Mouchette seems to disappear into her suffering. The only smile Bresson allows her is during a simple bumper car ride at a carnival, where she exchanges stolen glances with an older boy. The brief encounter -- in which she appears to enjoy the violence of the cars’ impact as much as the attention of the boy -- leaves her vulnerable to the manipulative poacher, Arsene (Jean-Claude Guilbert), when she later becomes lost during a vicious storm. Based on Georges Bernanos’ novel and told in painful close-ups of the alienated girl, “Mouchette” is brutal adolescence elevated to quiet tragedy and is counted as one of Bresson’s finest films.

A successful team

“Columbia Restorations: Rediscoveries,” at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, sheds light on 30 years of the studio’s offerings, in genres as far-ranging as screwball comedy and film noir. Harry Cohn, who ran the studio from 1932 until his death in 1958, favored the profitability of low-budget contemporary films, but also enjoyed the prestige brought by directors such as Frank Capra.

Capra’s 1932 social drama “American Madness,” starring the mischievous Walter Huston, opens the series. The film marked the first collaboration of the filmmaker with Robert Riskin as his sole screenwriter. The duo would go on to a string of successes, including the Oscar-winning “It Happened One Night” and “You Can’t Take It With You,” as well as “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” “Lost Horizon” and “Meet John Doe.”

In “Madness,” Huston plays Thomas Dickson, the president of the United National Bank, who is beset by a meddlesome board of directors for his character-based lending practices during the Great Depression. When the bank is burglarized in what appears to be an inside job, the faith in the institution is shaken. It’s up to Dickson and his loyal staff (Pat O’Brien and Constance Cummings) to stem the panic and avoid the run that will quickly ruin them. The film’s fast pace and rat-a-tat-tat dialogue belie that it takes place almost entirely in the confines of the bank. It screens with David Burton’s 1934 “Lady by Choice,” starring Carole Lombard and May Robson, a de facto sequel to Capra and Riskin’s 1933 “Lady for a Day.”

Heartbreak, hope

Also at UCLA, the Celebration of Iranian Cinema continues with “Wake Up, Arezoo!,” Kianoush Ayari’s harshly realistic drama set in the aftermath of the December 2003 earthquake that leveled the ancient city of Bam. Ayari began shooting just 11 days after the disaster, and the eerie landscape of rubble provides a riveting setting.

The struggle for survival amid the devastation recalls other recent major catastrophes in South Asia and along the U.S. Gulf Coast with its images of mass burials, makeshift hospitals and long lines of people and cars. Behnaz Jafari plays a young teacher in a village outside the city who pulls herself from a collapsed building only to find herself alone. She journeys to Bam, unaware that the destruction there is even greater. A cleric teaches her the ritual cleaning of the dead, and she makes herself useful that way. The other main character is a man (Mehran Rajabi) she encounters who has escaped the ruined local prison to find his family. The pair’s search for meaning after the horrific events is heartbreaking and encouraging, as they find hope and rebirth in the task of helping others.

Note: FilmForum presents “Reverence: The Films of Owen Land (Formerly Known as George Landow)” in two parts, at 8 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Jan. 29. The avant-garde filmmaker was known as Landow in the late 1960s and ‘70s when he made these experimental films, combining irreverence with a challenging intellectual response to film theory.

The program includes “Remedial Reading Comprehension” (1970), “Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.” (1965-66) and “On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?” (1977-79). The titles alone appear worth the price of admission. Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, www.lafilmforum.org.

Screenings

REDCAT

* “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”: 8 p.m. Sunday

Where: Disney Hall, 2nd and Hope streets, L.A.

Info: (213) 237-2800; www.redcat.org

LACMA

* “Mouchette”: 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday

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

Info: (323) 857-6010 or www.lacma.org

Columbia Restorations: Rediscoveries

* “American Madness” and “Lady by Choice”: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA campus