Graceful Grotesques

The American Cinematheque’s “Sacred Monsters: The Fantastic Cinema of Georges Franju” continues Friday at 7:15 p.m. at Raleigh Studios with “Thomas the Impostor” (1965). Franju’s greatest gift was his ability to elicit an overwhelming sense of poignancy in widely varied and unexpected situations, which is as true of his teenage hero in this exquisite film of the Jean Cocteau novel as it is of the husband-poisoner in “Therese Desqueyroux” (1962), which follows at 9:30 p.m.

The first film is a beautifully acted, stunning exercise in precisely controlled graceful style, as well as moods that alternate between quiet gaiety and deceptive passiveness. As World War I commences, a beautiful and gracious princess (Emmanuelle Riva) holds one last ball before leading a Red Cross convoy to the front to evacuate wounded soldiers.

Cutting the bureaucratic red tape threatening her efforts is a young officer named Thomas (Fabrice Rouleau). While the princess exists in a private world of gallant naivete, the dreamer Thomas lives in a fantasy world of his own making. Ever so gently Franju satirizes them while making them immensely appealing in their innocence and frequent kindness.

Commencing with an ironic flashback, the flawless “Therese” begins with its heroine’s return home after being cleared of charges of attempted murder to face a far sterner judge, her recuperated and unforgiving husband. Based on Francois Mauriac’s 1927 novel, which was inspired by an actual incident, “Therese” shows that we are not the free agents we think we are, for we cannot know many of the reasons for our actions, conditioned as we are by heredity and environment and ever at the mercy of chance.

It suggests that freedom and forgiveness are possible only with a self-knowledge that can be earned through suffering. The film is also a scathing indictment of a smug, hypocritical, provincial society--and the birth of a woman’s soul. Riva and Philippe Noiret are superb as this unhappy couple.

“Shadowman” (1974) and “The Sins of Father Mouret” (1970), which screen Saturday at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m., respectively, are instances of saving the worst for last, revealing a precipitous decline in Franju’s formidable powers.

The first is Franju’s misguided attempt to combine elements of two of his most effective films, “Judex” and “Eyes Without a Face.” He revives the mad surgeon of “Eyes” to create an army of zombies intended to solve the world’s need for a labor force that can be placed in storage during recessions, and intends another homage to another Feuillade serial, “Fantomas.” Just how the crazy doctor links up with the doings of the ancient order of the Knights Templar--which has changed from protecting pilgrims during the Crusades into a secret band of evil sorcerers--proves to be not all that intriguing.

Shot in color and shown in a lousy English-language version--the French version, however, is said to be no better--”Shadowman” is loaded with references to other films. Its fading color, as well as the 1970s bell bottoms, wide lapels and sideburns sported by the nominal hero (Jacques Champreux) and others, makes “Shadowman” seem all the more dated.

It has one of those cockamamie international casts, which here includes Gayle Hunnicutt (as a variation on the Catwoman), Gert Frobe (a police inspector) and Josephine Chaplin (the hero’s girlfriend).

At least “Shadowman” is energetic. “The Sins of Father Mouret,” adapted from an Emile Zola novel, is tedious as well as silly. Francis Huster stars as a delicate but dedicated 19th century priest determined to serve a village loaded with sinners and backsliders. When the priest collapses, leaving him with a memory loss, he’s nursed back to health by the local atheist’s niece (Gillian Hills), who comes across as an archetypal flower child of the hippie era in which this movie was made. You’re better off taking in a feast at 8 p.m. Saturday inspired by Franju films and catered by Classic Cuisine. (213) 466-FILM.

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“Santa Clara,” which opens Friday as the second film in the Music Hall’s Jewish Cinema series, is an off-putting, overwrought fable set in a grim, polluted industrial community in which a young Russian girl emigre wreaks havoc with her psychic powers. (310) 274-6869.

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Sunday at 7 p.m. at LACE, 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Filmforum will present experimental filmmaker Mark Street in person and a selection of his films. His eight-minute “Winterwheat” (1989) is a typical example of the beauty-in-chaos, we’re-going-to-hell-in-a-handcart short made by young experimentalists as he layers and reprocesses found images and sounds involving a harvest, a map of the U.S. and the giving way of a combine to a tank to evoke the coming of an apocalypse. This kind of film is fine but overly familiar.

Then Street starts getting really interesting with “Lilting Toward Chaos” (1990), a 21-minute diary film in which he considers his own life to convey vividly what it is like to be to young, talented and reflective in America today, your whole life in front of you, yet pondering why you feel you have “all the time in the world--and none at all.” As he restlessly travels from his base in San Francisco, where he supports his filmmaking with temporary jobs, to a hometown visit in Chicago and on to New York, Street wonders if all his introspection might make him sick.

He develops his concern with home and community and what they mean in a society where so many people are constantly moving in his provocative 50-minute “Why Live Here?” (1996). We get no more than glimpses of three people--a woman, a man and himself--who ask themselves how they feel about moving to a new place and what that place means to them.

Andy Lawless considers what it’s like to end up returning to your Montana hometown and going to work for your father, Madeleine Gavin considers her reactions to settling in San Francisco, and Street takes us with him to Tampa for a temporary stay. Throughout, Street’s camera is endlessly probing these locales, and he leaves us with the sense that one place may not be all that different from another--that in a very real sense you take your possibilities and limitations with you wherever you go.

Street’s work is engaging not only for its easy flow but also for the sense that you’re witnessing a talented filmmaker’s attempt to get to know himself--and to grow up. (213) 526-2911.