David Blair Waxes Dense and Daunting

David Blair’s “WAX or the discovery of television among the bees” (at the Nuart Tuesday and Wednesday) is one of the most daunting experimental films imaginable.

It’s an apocalyptic man-into-machine fable, employing a torrent of obscure video imagery, found footage and computer animation in telling of a man (played by Blair himself) who designs gunsight displays at an Army flight simulation plant in Alamogordo, N.M. On the side he keeps bees who apparently develop the ability to project into the man’s mind disturbing television images of both the past and the future. (Among many other things, he imagines himself turning into weapons of destruction.)

Blair is clearly a brilliant and original filmmaker--his film is dense with ideas and is as topical as the Gulf War--but his soundtrack narration drones on in such a monotonous tone we’re forever in danger of being lulled into sleep. Playing with it is Jonathan Reiss’ short, “A Brief Memory of Grief,” which charts the compulsive behavior of a creature who’s part dinosaur skeleton and part machine and who rules an Inferno-like subterranean universe.

Information: (310) 478-6379.

*

Regal Rossellini: Roberto Rossellini’s remarkable “The Rise to Power of Louis XIV” (Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater) offers a low-keyed, dryly ironic account of a ruler’s Machiavellian ascendance amid settings of rich splendor filmed in gorgeous color. What emerges with simplicity and ease that marks the work of a great director is a study of the psychology of power that is as absorbing as it is subtle and timeless.

For all its Bresson-like austerity, impeccably sober performances, especially by Jean-Marie Patte as the dour Louis, and amassing of details of the ceremonies of royal life, the film reveals Rossellini to be able, like Jean Renoir, to embrace humanity with a serene, clear-eyed compassion--and a sense of humor.

Information: (310) 206-8552.

*

Silent Spectacle: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (with Lothar Mendes) directed the third of the six filmings (to date) of A.E.W. Mason’s 1902 novel “Four Feathers” with the same sense of poignant spectacle they were to bring to their classic 1933 “King Kong.” Their 1929 version (at the Silent Movie Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.) will be presented with Hope Loring and William E. Peters’ original, properly stirring score, synchronized on the soundtrack, as was customary in the late silent era.

The film is not what one would automatically expect from a famous saga celebrating rather than criticizing the exploits of the British Empire at the height of its power. To be sure, it is scarcely a revisionist work--it never questions Britain’s military campaign in Sudan in the 1890s--yet it is eloquent in its expression of compassion and sympathy for Harry Faversham, a motherless boy of the 1860s raised by an elderly father in a staunchly military family.

Expected to follow tradition, the boy is exhorted at every turn by his father to live up to his ancestors, who loom over him in full regalia in immense ancestral portraits that line the staircase of his family’s stately home. Even his pretty playmate--she’s played by Fay Wray as an adult--a daughter of the regiment to the core, tells him that she won’t marry him when he grows up unless he becomes a soldier.

While it is true that the dialogue in the intertitles is very good, the filmmakers essentially reveal the psychology of Harry’s nature through purely visual means, a tribute to the glory of the silent film medium.

When he does grow up, Faversham (Richard Arlen, in one of his most complex portrayals) tells himself that he’s not afraid of anyone or anything but is “afraid of being afraid.” Thus, when he resigns rather than serve in Sudan, he receives four white feathers, marks of cowardice, from his father (George Fawcett) and his three best friends (William Powell, Clive Brook and Theodore Von Eltz) in his regiment. Not surprisingly, the rest of the film is devoted to Faversham’s redemption.

The point is that when he embarks on a heroic course it is of his own choosing, not something that has been demanded or expected of him. Such acute delineation of character may be actually far more intriguing to many than the African adventures that follow, including a herd of rampaging rhinos and an awesome battle scene.

Information: (213) 653-2389.