Trumbo’s ‘Brave One’ in Rare Revival

Eighteen years after blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, using the name Robert Rich, won a best original story Oscar for “The Brave One,” Trumbo was presented with his long overdue Academy Award just one year before his death in 1976. (Harry Franklin and Merrill G. White, credited with the screenplay, were not nominated.)

As time has passed, this incident, so symbolic of the injustices of the McCarthy era, have overshadowed the film itself, a classic family picture of timeless emotional impact. It receives a rare theatrical revival at the Four Star where it plays Wednesday through Sept. 8--and where it first opened on Oct. 26, 1956.

A work of the utmost simplicity dealing with a poor Mexican boy (Michel Ray) desperate to save his beloved pet bull from slaughter in Mexico City’s Plaza de Toros, “The Brave One” marked an offbeat teaming of the King Brothers, low-budget schlockmeisters, and Irving Rapper, who had been a prestigious director at Warners, most notably of “Now, Voyager” with its famous cigarette-lighting scene between Bette Davis and Paul Henreid. However, working in CinemaScope with legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff, Rapper, the quintessential studio director, handled with ease what is a large-scale outdoor odyssey, following Ray from a vast, remote rancho from one end of Mexico City to another. Playing with “The Brave One” are two Oscar-winning shorts, “The Red Balloon” and “The Golden Fish.” Information: (213) 936-3533.

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Timeless Satire of Film Biz: “The Films of Marcel Pagnol” concludes over Labor Day weekend with “Le Schpountz” (1938), which screens Saturday, Sunday and Monday at 11 a.m. at the Monica 4-Plex. The film takes its curious title from a Slavic expression, reportedly either used or coined by Pagnol’s cinematographer Willy (Faktorovitch) as a slang description of a film fanatic. In this instance, Fernandel plays the “schpountz,” a clerk who works in the small-town grocery store of his uncle (Charpin) but who believes he can be a movie star, despite his horse-like face.

“Le Schpountz” offers a timeless satire of the movie business, an incisive commentary on the nature of comedy and its value, and much too much talk (a Pagnol weakness); would that Billy Wilder had been on hand to do a tight re-write. Even so--and this is also typical of Pagnol--so much is brilliant, witty and wise that it’s worth the effort to see “Le Schpountz,” which features a portrayal by Orane Demazis as a shrewd film editor that is as dazzling as that of Fernandel, a great comedian.

Information: (310) 394-9741.