screen

Philippe de Broca, who made King of Hearts, comes to the Boston Center for the Arts this weekend to show two of his films: Chere Louise, starring Jeanne Moreau, and The Magnificent One, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jacqueline Bisset. The latter one is billed as a James Bond spoof. (But James Bond movies always seem sort of spoofy by themselves, don't they?) De Broca has come to Boston as a personal favor to Paul Michaud, formerly with West European Studies, now running his association in connection with the Boston Center. Chere Louise, Feb. 8, at 8; The Magnificent One, Feb. 9, at 8. For information, call 426-5000.

Harvard-Epworth films has started a series of all the films of Luis Bunuel, starting with his earliest, the 24-minute silent film Un Chien Andalou (1924), which he made with Salvador Dali. Bunuel had a surrealistic vision from the start, but his surrealism became politicized after a period of time. Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread) was commissioned by the Spanish government, but its political ideas were offensive to its commissioners, and so the film was banned in Spain soon after it was made. Simon of the Desert (1965) was made after his politics had grown mellower--though not quite to the gamesplaying stage of last year's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Since Brattle shows the same Bogart films over the over--all of them showing more or less the same sort of character--a lot of people at Harvard seem to think he couldn't really act. All he could do, so this position goes, was to be Bogart. The African Queen, showing at the Welles, certainly debunks the theory. His performance in John Huston's film of James Agee's screenplay of C.S. Forrester's novel almost rivals Katherine Hepburn's I overheard an unscrupulous wretch in the dining hall trying to start a rumor that the novel was actually by Stephen Foster, and was originally called Mississippi Queen, and started out with a man dying of Bayou fever, and that Bogart's ship was the Monitor.

That's almost as far-fetched as the real plot of Counterpoint, the Eliot house film which has John Finley getting shot in front of the Plaza. The cast also includes Edward Kennedy, Leonard Bernstein, etc.