Man in the Shadows: Alain Delon (Fri., Jan. 9–Sun., Jan. 18, $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Watch every one of the seven films in International House's series, scrutinize every minute of their sixteen hours; you won't see Alain Delon act. That's not an assessment of his limitations, but his virtues. Unlike English-language actors, whose literally retarded value system has them lining up to play mentally challenged roles in the hopes of scooping up trophies, Delon retains an essential core, like the great European actors and the Hollywood stars from whom they took their cues. Delon's power is that of the actor as auteur, transforming films not by exertion of his star-system power, but by the simple force of his presence: If there's not so much difference between the chameleonic killer of Purple Noon (1961) and the embattled police commissioner of Un Flic/Dirty Money (1972) -- well, that might be the point.

The series opens with the star-making Purple Noon (Fri., 8 p.m., with a repeat next Saturday), René Clément's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (truer to the spirit, if not the letter, of Highsmith's novel than Anthony Minghella's literal-minded remake). That Delon played a duplicitous murderer might have had less to do with his sudden stardom than the fact that he frequently did so without a shirt, but the character's singular sense of purpose and unflagging amorality laid the groundwork for portrayals to come, not least of which are the conscienceless (if not dishonorable) killers he played in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970). Unfortunately, exhibition rights to Le Samouraï are currently not available, but those who missed Cercle during its brief run at the Ritz (or had it ruined for them by an audience who takes Melville's silences as an invitation to chat) will be happy to have another shot at it (Sat., 1 p.m.). Melville aficionados will want to show up early on Saturday (7 p.m. instead of 8) to catch Jean-Pierre Melville: Portrait in Nine Poses before the screening of Un Flic. Produced by André Labarthe and Janine Bazin, the 1971 bio (twice as long as the excerpt on Criterion's Cercle Rouge DVD) shows a Stetson-topped Melville tooling around in a Ford Mustang, then holing himself up in a windowless room so he may write through the night without being disturbed by sunrise: Two images that together perfectly capture Melville's aesthetic. Next week: Antonioni's The Eclipse, Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers and Henri Verneuil's Any Number Can Win.

Pièces d'identits (Thu., Jan. 8, 7:30 p.m., $6, International House) Written and directed by Congolese Mweze Ngangura, Pièces d'identités (1998) isn't a great film, or even a particularly well-made one, but the ideas in it are so fascinating that it merits a look all the same. Dedicated "to the African diaspora," the movie is rife with overlapping tokens of national and cultural identity: The French title means "identification," but it also suggests that, in the modern world, identity is a patchwork, a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces don't fit. Chaka-Jo (Jean-Louis Daulne), who sleeps in his illegal taxi when he's not driving it, was born in the Congo and lives in Belgium, but belongs to neither: He's sufficiently light-skinned to be called "white boy" by the man handing over his fake Congo passport, who tells him, "You're a real Congolese now."

Adapting Elizabethan comedy to the harsh realities of modern life, Pièces d'identités (which will be projected on video) is full of characters searching for each other and just missing, as well as the usual trinkets -- lockets, childhood photographs and so on. Chaka-Jo wears a locket bequeathed by his dead mother, while tribal king Mani Kongo (Gérard Essomba) carries a picture of his long-lost daughter who, unbeknownst to him, has been not in medical school but in jail. But Ngangura's script doesn't have the deftness of its models, and its pat resolution discards the insights revealed along the way. Still, at times, it's a vivid portrait of the ways "invisible" immigrant populations can establish an existence at right angles to popular culture. Watching a bafflingly racist white comedian on a restaurant television, Mani Kongo asks the man next to him, "Whites still laugh at this?" He replies, "I like it, too -- it reminds us to laugh at them."

One From the Heart (starts Wed., Jan. 14, $8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215 569-9700) If Heaven's Gate (1980) killed the age of the director, Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 romance brought flowers to the funeral. Understandably shell-shocked from Apocalypse Now, Coppola devised a form of "electronic cinema" that would give the director total control, letting him hole up in an Airstream trailer dubbed the "Silverfish" while directing from afar. The result is as beautiful as a plastic rose, and just as fake. Shot entirely on the stages of the fledgling Zoetrope studios (whose future was ended by One From the Heart's failure), the film's Las Vegas is flamboyantly artificial, from Dean Tavoularis' dollhouse sets to Vittorio Storaro's limpid lighting. But there's too much soap in Coppola's opera. As down-and-out lovers who split up for separate nights on the town, Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest seem so mismatched you can't understand why they were together in the first place. When Garr hooks up with Raul Julia's piano-playing waiter and they share a lusty, graceful tango, you think, "Good, someone she can have fun with." Forrest, horribly miscast, is more lump than lumpen, his mopey naturalism pooling listlessly in the movie's corners.

Its revolutionary techniques -- which included precursors to the now-commonplace video assist and online editing -- notwithstanding, One From the Heart seems more theatrical than cinematic: The Vegas street becomes a lighted disco floor; opposing scenes play out on either side of a translucent scrim. So it's fitting that it's been re-released in the old-fashioned 1:33 aspect ratio, even if that means glimpses of things we presumably weren't meant to see (a studio ceiling, Lainie Kazan's bandaged wrist). For a movie whose only virtues are its excesses, more is indeed more. One From the Heart runs five days at the Prince, takes a night off, then returns Tuesday the 20th, preceded by a talk by Steadicam pioneer Garrett Brown. Watch for Prince screenings of Apocalypse Now Redux and the Godfather trilogy in late January and February.

Hud ($19.99 DVD) A '60s movie before "The Sixties" began, Martin Ritt's Hud (1963) has more in common with Look Back in Anger than Easy Rider. Had he been born a generation later, Hud (Paul Newman) might have been able to leave the family cattle-ranching business and strike out for the big city: As it is, he's stayed in the small town he was born in, growing more bitter by the day. His simmering anger is catnip for the ladies (and oy, Paul Newman in that tank top), but they stay married to their husbands, and Hud drives home alone. Larry McMurtry's generational saga (Melvyn Douglas as the upright old rancher, Brandon de Wilde as the bright-eyed kid) is enhanced by James Wong Howe's panoramic photography, which brings out the looming gray in every cloud and the simmering sexual tension between Newman and Patricia Neal's housekeeping divorcee. (They've both been through too much to hide their lust for each other, though she's too smart to act on it.) Decrying a world plagued with "price-fixing, crooked TV shows, expense accounts," Hud foreshadows the moral crisis to come, at the same time showing how old-world values crushed the life out of more than one small-town rebel.