‘Wise Wives’ Looks at Human Nature

Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, which last year presented Lois Weber’s “The Blot” (1921), screens Weber’s “Two Wise Wives” (1921) tonight at 8.

As in “The Blot,” which also stars Claire Windsor and Louis Calhern, the socially conscious Weber’s preachy streak gives way to a complex vision of human nature as she observes compassionately newlywed Windsor’s sometimes amusing, sometimes painful mastery of the art of being a good wife, a lesson also learned by her husband Calhern’s former love (a sultry actress billed as Mona Lisa); the film is also a wonderful document of upper-crust fashions and decor.

Weber was a remarkable filmmaker, and so was Alice Guy-Blache, who can lay claim to being the first true director in the world, male or female. The four Guy-Blache shorts that accompany “Two Wise Wives” were made in Fort Lee, N.J., in 1912-13 and reveal her to be master at breezy comedy, to which she brings a far lighter touch than Mack Sennett. Information: (310) 822-3006.

Two From Korea: Two recent films by Korea’s most prestigious director, Im Kwon-Taek, screen tonight at 7:30 at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater. The first is “The General’s Son” (1990), the highest-grossing Korean film ever, a martial arts gangster film set vaguely in the ‘20s or ‘30s during Japan’s occupation of Korea.

Although well-crafted and a potent anti-Japanese rabble rouser, it’s a conventional tale of a youth (Park Sang-min) who rises from poverty to unite warring gangs to resist Japanese oppression.

Far more impressive and on the level of the director’s best work, “Come, Come, Come Upward” (1989) takes the stuff of melodrama and transmutes it into an epic-scale, deeply moving account of the spiritual odyssey of a young woman (beautifully played by the exquisite Kang Soo-yeon). Information: (310) 206-FILM, (310) 206-8013.

Silent Classic Returns: If you missed Giuseppe Pastrone’s dazzling landmark 1913 spectacle “Cabiria” two years ago at LACMA, you’ll have another chance to see it Saturday at 8 p.m. at LACMA when it launches the “Classics of the Silent Cinema” series. The film that inspired D.W. Griffith to intercut his “The Mother and Law” with three other stories from different historic periods to create “Intolerance”--and which also seems to have influenced Michael Curtiz’s “Sodom and Gomorrah,” various DeMille biblicals and even Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”--takes its title from a little girl who is believed killed in the volcanic destruction of her family’s palace. “Cabiria” is a timeless odyssey of separation and survival, set against the Punic Wars. Information: (213) 857-6010.

Key Screenings: Other key screenings this week: Francois Truffaut’s rarely revived “The Wild Child” (1969) and “Small Change” (1976) at the Vagabond through Saturday, (213) 387-2171, and Herbert Brenon’s dashing 1926 adventure “Beau Geste” with Ronald Colman, screening Friday at 8 p.m. at the Silent Movie with organ accompaniment by Gaylord Carter, (213) 653-2389.