CRITIC’S PICK

Time was when it was no big deal to see old American black-and-white films on a big screen -- it still isn’t in Paris, of all places -- but in this country it has become a rare event worthy of celebration. Which is what should be done about the intriguing UCLA series “Cool Drinks of Water: Columbia’s Noir Girls of the ‘40s and ‘50s,” which starts Friday night at the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Six fine but underappreciated actresses -- Gloria Grahame, Lizabeth Scott, Nina Foch, Cleo Moore, Evelyn Keyes and Rochelle Hudson -- get a double bill apiece over the next several weeks and show us the craft and intelligence that often went into studio B pictures. The series gets off to a great start with the Grahame double bill: “The Glass Wall,” in which the actress is shown to her best advantage costarring with Vittorio Gassman, and “Human Desire,” under Fritz Lang’s direction in a version of the same Emile Zola novel that inspired the Jean Gabin-starring “La Bete Humaine.”