Once you clear the membership paperwork, and if you can avoid the occasional s překladem Czech recitations of film scripts from the back of the house, Ponrepo is an invaluable resource for serious cineastes in Prague. With its access to the National Film Archives, the famous kino off Konviktská primarily presents monthlong showcases of important directors' work.

This month Ponrepo has been focusing on John Huston, among others. Though a few of the films ran with the dreaded Czech commentary (The Man Who Would be King, The Asphalt Jungle) and a few of the director's missteps were trotted out (Moulin Rouge, Moby Dick), the three films featured this week are among Huston's greatest achievements, and all three will be screened with the quieter Czech subtitles.

Fat City (1972) is reckoned by many to be Huston's greatest film, which is saying a lot when you consider The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Beat the Devil. Yet one of Britain's leading film critics, Derek Malcom, rates Fat City as one of the 100 greatest films of all time. Sadly sinking into oblivion after its release, Fat City is worth discovering, as it is one in a handful of classic films that deals with boxing (Body and Soul, Requiem for a Heavyweight and Scorsese's Raging Bull are among the others).

Shot in the Steinbeck country of Northern California, Fat City is the tale of a washed-up boxer, Billy Tully (the excellent Stacy Keach), who has dreams of making a comeback. Like Brando's Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, Tully "coulda been a contender." Living with his fellow alcoholic girlfriend, Oma (Susan Tyrrell), Tully painfully pulls himself back into some semblance of order to re-enter the ring.

The characters that people Fat City are much like the soured-luck souls in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh: They've hit bottom, but survive clutching their illusions. Huston's cast, including Jeff Bridges and Candy Clark, is excellent, and the film did much to revive Huston's waning reputation. Tough, uncompromising and ultimately humane, Fat City is a small masterpiece. (Sept. 7 at 5:30 p.m.)

From a little-known film to one that is perhaps too famous: Huston's The Misfits (1961) has tragedy hanging over it like a razor-edged pendulum. It was the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, both of whom died shortly after its completion. It was also one of the last projects that the bruised and battered genius of American film acting, Montgomery Clift, would complete. The history of The Misfits only adds to the prevailing sadness of a story that is (like its great contemporaries Lonely are the Brave and Hud) an elegy for the West and the Western.

Shot in a scorching Nevada, The Misfits is an unlikely love story between a young divorcée, Roslyn (Monroe), and an aging cowboy-turned Mustang rustler named Gay (Gable). As in Fat City, Roslyn, Gay and their companions are just managing to hang on as best they can. But the dog-eat-dog Darwinism of American society has them struggling. Gay, a proud man of the open range, finds himself only able to make a living by capturing the wild horses of the Nevada desert to sell to a slaughterhouse for dog food.

Written by playwright Arthur Miller for his then-wife Monroe, and with another fine supporting cast headed by Thelma Ritter, Estelle Winwood and Eli Wallach (the last surviving cast member of this film full of disintegration), The Misfits, though hardly flawless, is a strange, haunting classic of American cinema. (Sept. 11 at 8 p.m.).

Released the same year as Fat City, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean is a different type of Western. Often whimsical and occasionally surreal, Huston's take on the famous outlaw who became "the Law West of the Pecos" is a riotous yarn showing the director at his comical best.

Paul Newman as Bean is excellent, but the film succeeds as an ensemble piece. Critics have rightly compared it to Robert Altman's ensemble films, though Roy Bean is certainly superior to Altman's own satirical Western, Buffalo Bill and the Indians (starring Newman as well).

In Roy Bean, Huston manages to fill this small film with a lot of talent: Ava Gardner, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, Ned Beatty, Anthony Zerbe, Roddy McDowell and Tab Hunter. Huston even directs himself as Grizzly Adams. Stacy Keach makes a memorable cameo as an albino gunslinger, Bad Bob, and nearly steals the entire film.