‘Greatest Commercials’ Are a Sophisticated Bunch

You won’t see a single intelligence-insulting pitch for household products in “The World’s Greatest Commercials, 1994” (Nuart, Tuesday through Thursday), a 71-minute compendium of 97 commercials selected last year at Cannes. Not surprisingly, the targeted markets are by and large upscale, with an emphasis on wit and sophistication.

Terse public service announcements make the greatest impact, and Denmark and Italy are clearly lots less uptight about nudity on TV than most countries. By far the most subtle offerings are two for Levis for Women, both featuring venturesome animation. Pepsi-Cola appears to provide the biggest budgets, turning out mini-Hollywood blockbusters, one of which deftly sends up the Woodstock generation.

Not all of the entries seem like winners, and some have far too little connection to the product being pushed. In one of the best--you do remember the brand name, which is the whole point--a little old lady drops a quart of ice cream, which rolls under her car, which she promptly lifts up a la Sandow the Strongman; “Dreyer’s,” we’re told, “isn’t an ordinary ice cream.”

Information: (310) 478-6379.

‘Berlin’ Melting Pot: Screening as part of the UCLA Film Archives “Turkish Cinema” (Thursday through Sunday at Melnitz Theater) is Sinan Cetin’s knockout “Berlin in Berlin” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz Theater). Confident of the storytelling resources of the camera, Cetin swiftly shows us with minimal dialogue a German engineer (Armin Block), taking a photograph of a beautiful Turkish woman (Hulya Avser). She’s bringing lunch to her construction-worker husband, who is so outraged by the German’s taking a picture of his wife that he attacks him, only to wind up dead, accidentally impaled on a steel rod.

Not long after, the guilt-stricken German winds up in the dead man’s apartment, inhabited by four generations of his family, including his widow and her hotheaded brother-in-law (Cem Ozer), intent on avenging his brother’s death but prevented from doing so by Muslim custom of sanctuary, which says as long as the engineer remains in the apartment he cannot be harmed.

Cetin brilliantly sustains this standoff, which introduces us to some gracious Turkish customs, skewers Turkish machismo but drives home the overpowering rage and frustration that Turkish emigres often experience in a country that often seems inhospitable to them.

Note: Yilmaz Guney’s landmark “Yol” and “The Wall” have been dropped from the series due to unavailability of prints.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.

Famous Photo: Back in 1958, Esquire magazine’s young graphics editor Robert Benton, now the esteemed filmmaker, gathered some 60 jazz musicians for a group photograph in front of a Harlem brownstone for a cover story on the golden age of jazz. Documentarian Jean Bach, in the irresistible, Oscar-nominated, 59-minute “A Great Day in Harlem” (at the Nuart Friday for one week) persuaded the surviving musicians to speak of those who have since died--legends such as Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Charles Mingus and Pee Wee Russell.

As luck would have it, bass player Milt Hinton and his wife Mona brought along their 8mm camera to film the occasion, and their footage complements the now-famous photograph, taken by Art Kane, as do snapshots taken by others of the historic gathering.

Bach has been able to make that day come alive through image as well as sound--all the departed greats are seen and heard performing in film clips--and through the insightful reminiscences of their peers.

Also screening: Gjon Mili’s classic 1944 jam session documentary short “Jammin’ the Blues.”

Out on Screen: Out on the Screen presents “Coming Out With a Vengeance: A Festival of Sex, Politics and Romance” at Paramount Studio’s main theater Saturday, Sunday and Feb. 27.

Among the films screening are Andre Techines remarkable “Wild Reeds” (Sunday at 7 p.m.), a poignant coming-of-age saga set against France’s loss of Algeria; Steve McLean’s “Postcards From America” (Saturday at 7 p.m.), a gritty, sharp-edged tale of a gay youth who turns to hustling after a violent childhood, and Australia’s “The Sum of Us” (next Monday at 7:30 p.m.), David Stevens’ drama of a loving father (Jack Thompson) and his adult gay son (Russell Crowe).

For full schedule and tickets call Theatix: (213) 466-1767.