ALDRICH RETROSPECTIVE AT UCLA

How lucky Robert Aldrich was to have Edward G. Robinson as the star of his first film, “The Big Leaguer� (1953), which, screening at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at UCLA Melnitz, launches a retrospective of the late director’s work. It’s a sentimental baseball yarn in which Robinson was cast as John B. (Hans) Lobert, a former third baseman who founded the New York Giants’ training farm in Melbourne, Fla. It’s a pleasing reminder of what a great screen actor Robinson really was--and in a role far removed from the gangster portrayals that have secured his place in film history.

Playing with “The Big Leaguer� is the picture that may well be Aldrich’s very best: “Kiss Me Deadly� (1955), a film noir classic based on the Mickey Spillane novel. As Mike Hammer, toughest of private eyes, Ralph Meeker gives a lift to a distraught Cloris Leachman and the corpses commence piling up. “Kiss Me Deadly� is one of those mysteries so convoluted that even at the end you’re not quite sure how it all adds up. “Kiss Me Deadly� is the film that established Aldrich’s hard-edged style and reputation for cynicism. Following the screenings there will be a panel discussion on Aldrich’s career headed by writer-director Abraham Polonsky. Phones: (213) 825-2581, 825-2953.

There are wonderful character actors and L.A. locales in “Kiss Me Deadly,� and the same is true for another celebrated film noir of the ‘50s, Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing� (l956), which screens Wednesday at the New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverly Blvd. Both films, shot in a gritty black and white, are in fact invaluable records of the now-leveled Bunker Hill with its seedy turn-of-the-century splendor and its quaint Angels Flight, for 60 years billed as the world’s shortest railway.

Based on Lionel White’s thriller “Clean Break,� “The Killing� remains not only one of Kubrick’s most satisfying films but also one of the most “perfect� heist movies ever made. Although celebrated for its intricate construction involving fragmented time and shifts in point of view (which were in the White novel), “The Killing� endures above all because of its superlative performances. Masterminding a race track robbery is stoic loser Sterling Hayden (in a role similar to the one he played in “The Asphalt Jungle�). The standouts, however, are Elisha Cook Jr. as a nervous, henpecked track cashier and Marie Windsor as his brassy gold-digging wife. Phone: (213) 938-40838.

“Hito Hata: Raise the Banner� (1980), the first full-length film dealing with the history of the Japanese-Americans actually made by Japanese-Americans, will screen Sunday at UCLA Melnitz at 7:30 as part of an Asian-American International Film Festival. A low-budget Oriental “Roots,� “Hito Hata� is first of all a tribute to the persevering Issei, the first generation of Japanese-Americans. Mako is cast as Oda, a sturdy octogenarian--or more--who came to California in 1910 to work on the railroads. “Hito Hata� was directed by Robert A. Nakamura and Duane Kubo from a story by Nakamura and others at Visual Communications, a Little Tokyo-based media company and archive.