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Two Focus on Film series are planned this year at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

A fall-winter series carries the theme “Replay,” referring to films in which oft-used material is truly reinvented, not just recycled. Four films are scheduled from November through January; two of them, to be presented on one night, are Alfred Hitchcock’s two takes on The Man Who Knew Too Much, from 1934 and 1956.

A spring series offers remakes of a different kind: films inspired by seminal graphic novels. According to the Mondavi Center, the graphic novel has come into its own as a respected art form in the last 25 years, supplying readers with the traditional novel’s beginning, middle and end, juxtaposed against the raw visual aesthetic of classic comic books.

FALL-WINTER: REPLAY

• Purple Noon, directed by René Clément (1960), rated PG-13, 112 minutes, French with English subtitles. Described as a positively creepy screen adaptation of suspense novelist Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, later adapted by Wim Wenders in his 1977 film The American Friend. 6 p.m. Nov. 2.

• Boudu Saved from Drowning, directed by Jean Renoir (1932), not rated, 85 minutes, French with English subtitles. A comedic tale of the nearly drowned vagrant, Boudu, who takes over a middle-class Parisian family after the patriarch rescues him from the Seine River. The story is retold in Paul Mazursky’s 1986 film Down and Out in Beverly Hills. 6 p.m. Nov. 16.

• The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock’s classic black-and-white version, from Britain (1934), not rated, 75 minutes. 6 p.m. Jan. 25.

• The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock’s Hollywood version, in color, starring James Stewart and Doris Day (1956), not rated, 120 minutes. 8 p.m. Jan. 25.

SPRING: GRAPHIC NOVEL

• American Splendor, directed by Robert Pulcini (2003), rated R, 101 minutes, English. The story of Harvey Pekar, graphic novelist and antihero. Starring Paul Giamatti as Pekar. Interspersed with live footage of the cantankerous Pekar himself and his life work realized through vivid animation. 6 p.m. March 8.

• Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff (2001), rated R, 111 minutes, English. A live action take on the graphic novel of the same name, chronicling with humor and irony the life of seemingly average characters, all with the proverbial deck stacked against them. 6 p.m. April 5.

• Persepolis, directed by Vincent Parannaud and Marjane Satrapi (2007), rated PG-13, 96 minutes. The English version of the beautifully animated French film about growing up in prerevolutionary and revolutionary Iran, with voicings by Sean Penn and Gena Rowlands. 6 p.m. April 19.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Focus on Film

WHERE: Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

ADMISSION: $10 for adults and $5 for students. Also available: a pass for $27 for your choice of any three films, or a season pass for $55 for all seven films. (Note: Admission to the 8 p.m. screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much is $5 for tickets purchased in combination with $10 tickets to the 6 p.m. screening of Hitchcock’s 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.)

MORE INFORMATION:  (click on “By Genre” on the ‘09-’10 Events Calendar tab, then on “Film”).