A director opens UCLA’s vaults

THE UCLA Film and Television Archive has long wanted to audiences to know just how rich and diverse a collection it is.

“Even though we program throughout the year, we hardly even tap the depth of the collection,” says Cheng-Sim Lim, co-head of exhibitions and public programs at the archive. “We are constantly surprised by what we have in the collection.”

The archive houses more than 150,000 films, 5,000 hours of newsreels chronicling the 20th century, 130,000 television programs and 10,000 vintage TV commercials, as well as movie trailers, silent films, animated films and Vitaphone shorts.

So with the opening of the archive’s new home at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, Lim came up with the concept of having directors curate a series of films. “We wanted to bring in filmmakers in,” she says, “because they could bring a fresh perspective and be completely unorthodox in the way they curate.”

Serendipitously, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner gave the archive funds earmarked for expanding the audience for classic American films. “So we have the desire and we have the means and the timing is good,” says Lim.

The first filmmaker they approached was Canada’s iconoclastic Guy Maddin (“Tales From Gimli Hospital,” “The Saddest Music in the World”), an unabashed cineaste whose short and feature films are influenced by vintage cinema. “He also really consciously reworks the cinema of the past,” says Lim. “He was a natural to curate from our collection.”

“Curated by Guy Maddin” features an eclectic group of motion pictures -- including some of his own short films.

“I did a virtual walk-though of [the archive’s] vaults,” says Maddin, “and started submitting a dream list.” The only caveat was that Maddin couldn’t choose any nitrate prints because the Wilder’s nitrate projectors are still being made in Germany.

“In some cases they are movies I was familiar with but really wanted to see them on 35-millimeter and share them with the world,” says Maddin, who will talk about his choices on the first two evenings of the series.

“I think the world would be a better place if people saw them. Or they were movies I was always curious about. They supplied screeners so I could be certain that my hunches were right about them -- that they were tape-measure home runs.”

The series opens Friday with Cecil B. DeMille’s 1929 drama “The Godless Girl.” Set on a college campus, the film revolves around coed atheists who find themselves pitted against an angry group of Christians.

“I saw an interview with C.B.,” Maddin recalls. “He said every night that his father would read him three bedtime stories: one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament and one from ‘The Arabian Nights.’ There is something of each one of those things in this movie.”

“Girl” is followed by the 1926 fantasy “A Kiss for Cinderella,” which reunited “Peter Pan” director Herbert Brenon and star Betty Bronson.

The double bill next Sunday consists of several Maddin shorts and Fritz Lang’s 1944 war thriller “Ministry of Fear.” Based on the Graham Greene novel, the film stars Ray Milland and Dan Duryea.

“I had seen it when it came out on VHS,” says Maddin. “For some reason I didn’t appreciate it enough. I wanted it to be exactly like [Lang’s] ‘Scarlet Street,’ which I adored. So when I got a chance to revisit ‘Ministry of Fear,’ I didn’t have that prejudice anymore. It wiped me out. It’s really a beautifully surreal movie. It’s a real Dan Duryea fest as well. If you want an oily forelock, he’s your man.”

Screening March 9 are a pair of noir films, 1949’s “Caught” and 1952’s “On Dangerous Ground,” starring Robert Ryan. The series concludes March 17 with Mary Pickford’s last movie, 1933’s “Secrets,” and the 1937 melodrama “Make Way for Tomorrow.”

“Secrets,” directed by Frank Borzage (“A Farewell to Arms”), “is an odd one,” says Maddin. “There is something slightly funereal that comes with the knowledge that it is Mary Pickford’s last film. Unlike most Borzage movies, it takes place over 50 years. There is a period that not only is Mary Pickford playing a 16-year-old, she is wearing clothes from a period that never photographed well. As the movie progresses, it finds itself and gets appropriate and sophisticated.”

“Make Way for Tomorrow,” directed by Leo McCarey, deals with children and their aging parents. Beulah Bondi, who wasn’t even 50, plays an elderly woman who is put into a nursing home.

“She made a pact with the devil that she would always look 69 years old,” quips Maddin. “I like the premise of it, when parents get to be old they have to be sent to separate nursing homes and the children don’t care very much. It’s emotionally plausible.”

susan.king@latimes.com

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‘Curated by Guy Maddin’

Where: The Billy Wilder Theater, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood

When: Friday through March 17

Price: $7 to $9

Contact: (310) 206-8013 or go to www.cinema.ucla.edu

Schedule

Friday: “The Godless Girl,” “A Kiss for Cinderella,” 7:30 p.m.

Next Sunday: “A Guy Maddin Short Film Sampler,” “Ministry of Fear,” 7 p.m.

March 9: “Caught,” “On Dangerous Ground,” 7:30 p.m.

March 17: “Secrets,” “Make Way for Tomorrow,” 7:30 p.m.