EL INDIO’S FILMS OPEN LATIN SERIES

In the 1940s, the legendary actor-director Emilio Fernandez, known as El Indio, became Mexico’s most important director. Working with the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, Fernandez made a number of highly poetic films--rooted in his country’s folklore and dealing with the plight of the poor and oppressed--that were the first to bring international acclaim to the Mexican cinema.

Fernandez’s “The Pearl” (1947) and “Maria Candelaria” (1943) comprise the first program in the Nuart’s Tuesday evening Cinema Mexico series.

Adapted by Fernandez, who died last August at 82, and John Steinbeck from Steinbeck’s story, “The Pearl,” is a classic parable on the perils of sudden wealth and is a film of striking pictorial beauty. Set in a small coastal fishing village, it stars Pedro Armendariz as a near-starving pearl diver who finds an enormous baroque pearl, which threatens to curse rather than bless his small family.

This timeless tale could not be more exquisitely told, steeped as it is in the picturesque, but seen today it seems almost too simplistic--too easily read as a rationalization for doing nothing to ameliorate the plight of the poor.

“Maria Candelaria” is a more satisfying example of Fernandez’s attempt to create a true, socially conscious Mexican cinema. Dolores Del Rio is the radiant but ill-fated Aztec beauty Maria, scorned because of her mother’s reputation but adored by a handsome peasant (Armendariz). Rapturously photographed by Figueroa (who won a prize at Cannes for his efforts), “Maria Candelaria” is romantic melodrama raised to the level of poetic tragedy. (213) 478-6379, 479-5269.

The Nuart is presenting two documentaries Thursday on Central America: David Bradbury’s Oscar-nominated “Chile: Hasta Cuando? (“When Will It End?”) and Peter Torbiornsson’s “On the Border.”

An Australian, Bradbury told Chilean authorities that he intended to film a music festival--and he did get an interview with a politically naive John Denver--but he went on to record a damning portrait of life under a brutal dictatorship. Frankly sympathetic to the Communists, Bradbury effectively captures the highly volatile paranoia generated and sustained by tensions between the extreme right and the extreme left. (One wishes he’d spent more time with a Christian Democratic party leader who believes that the answer lies in a nonviolent response to Pinochet.)

Once again, we’re reminded of the United States’ role in Allende’s downfall and of the economic chaos and terrible suffering that the Chilean people have endured since.

As familiar as much of “Chile: Hasta Cuando?” is, it is impressive for the courage of the many Chilean people who speak out at the very real risk of their lives.

In “On the Border,” Sweden’s Torbiornsson captures vividly a sense of the harrowing quality of everyday life in Central America, but he covers so much territory in several countries, collecting so many points of view along the way, that his film becomes more confusing than illuminating.

The UCLA Film Archive’s continuing Homage to the Cinematheque Francaise on Thursday will present Viatcheslav Tourjansky’s 1924 film of De Maupassant’s “That Swine, Morin” (at 5:30 p.m. in Melnitz Theater) and (at 7:30 p.m.) the first half of Henri Fescourt’s majestic, monumental 5 1/2-hour film of “Les Miserables” (1925).

Clearly a masterwork of the silent cinema, Fescourt’s version of the Victor Hugo classic has much the scope, passion and impact of Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz”--despite the dated declamatory style of its acting. Gabriel Gabrio brings a massive dignity to his Jean Valjean, the man who stole a loaf of bread and suffered mightily thereafter.

So authentic-looking are the handsomely photographed film’s settings, which range from wretched hovel to the elegant salons of the rich, that they are dazzling in themselves. “Les Miserables” is a work of great themes--the capriciousness of fate, the eternal struggle of good and evil and the redemptive power of faith and love--which emerge with simplicity and power.

Tourjansky’s film is a slight, rueful comedy about a middle-aged wine merchant who drunkenly kisses a young woman on a train. (213) 825-2345, 2581.