The Power of ‘Shoah’ : The 9 1/2-hour film is the final offering in the ‘Really Long Film Series.’

With his 9 1/2-hour “Shoah,” Claude Lanzmann accomplished the seemingly impossible: He brought such beauty to his recounting of the horror of the Holocaust that he made it accessible and comprehensible. Rarely screened because of its formidable length, the monumental 1985 film will be the final offering in the American Cinematheque’s “Really Long Film Series” at Raleigh Studios. Part I screens Saturday at 7:15 p.m., and Part II Sunday at 6:15 p.m.

“Shoah” is not only a document of incalculable historical importance but also a great work of art. It stands as a testament to the human spirit and its capacity to endure in the face of an evil of such a diabolical nature and immensity of scale as to be without precedent. So inspired a filmmaker is Lanzmann that he makes the unbearable bearable and, in doing so, offers the catharsis of classic tragedy. Suspenseful and compelling, “Shoah” is the ultimate mystery movie, its quest no less than an attempt to illuminate the darkest depths of the human soul. “Shoah”--”annihilation” in Hebrew--contains no archival footage or stills of the Holocaust and its victims.

Focusing on the Nazi extermination centers of Poland, Lanzmann--a veteran French journalist--interviews the precious few survivors of those camps, their administrators and those who lived near these rural sites. As Lanzmann’s conversations with his subjects continue, his camera begins to survey what remains of the damnably picturesque locales where these terrible events took place less than half a century ago.

It is “Shoah’s” supremely inspired construction that makes it so mesmerizing and permanently haunting. The key is the deeply involving tension “Shoah” develops through simultaneous expansion and contraction. “Shoah” is circular: It starts calmly, introducing us to places and people, proceeding to the next locale and the next set of individuals, and on and on, but then it begins returning again and again to the same sites and same speakers. Gradually, we become aware that as “Shoah” increases its cast of witnesses, its roster of crimes against humanity ever lengthening and the geographical distances it covers ever growing, it also is relentlessly tightening, probing deeper and deeper into the emotions and memories of its subjects.

“Shoah” could scarcely be a more eloquent reminder that anything is permissible once one group of people starts regarding another as less than human. Significantly, Jewish corpses were referred to as “pieces” and “figuren,” which translates as puppets or dolls. “Shoah” gives immediacy to a catastrophic event that many would prefer not to remember having happened in the first place. On the printed page, the witnesses’ testimony can become unbearably painful to read, but on the screen, “Shoah” is so powerful, so overwhelming an experience, you never wish to stop listening or to look away. (213) 466-FILM.

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You can’t watch Monique Schwarz’s warm, embracing “Bitter Herbs and Honey”--which screens today at 5 p.m. and again on Sunday 2:30 p.m. at the Town Center 5, Encino, and Dec. 23 at the Music Hall as part of the “Cinema Judaica ‘97” series--without thinking of Boyle Heights. That’s because Schwarz centers on Carlton, an old Jewish neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia, which has since faded as a center of Jewish life, just as Boyle Heights has. The story of Carlton becomes for Schwarz a survey of Jews in Australia, in which the pressure to assimilate within mainstream 19th century Australian society was so severe that Jews tended not to identify themselves as such, resorting to such descriptions as “English people of the Mosaic persuasion.”

Much of the film deals with the clash between Jewish refugees, mainly from Eastern Europe, who fled to Australia before and after the Holocaust, and the established Jewish community, which regarded them as too assertive and low-class. Today the Jews of Australia face the same challenge as in United States, which is how to participate freely in the life of the nation while preserving an ancient culture. Music Hall: (310) 274-6869; Town Center 5: (818) 981-9811.

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Josh Becker’s “Running Time,” which opens today at the Monica 4-Plex, is an amusing and highly effective example of how shooting an entire 70-minute feature in one single take can bring intense immediacy and psychological validity to a traditional caper-gone-wrong plot. Adapted by Becker from a story by Peter Y. Choi, it opens with a warden’s heartfelt farewell to Carl (Bruce Campbell), a model prisoner who has worked as a laundry foreman. Becker’s resourceful camera crew follows Carl out of the prison, where he is met by Patrick (Jeremy Roberts), an old pal and partner in crime, who has rounded up some guys to help them hold up, almost immediately, the nearby off-the-premises office where the laundry’s hefty profits are held for skimming by the warden.

The none-too-swift Patrick is the wrong guy to set up the heist, but he has also lined up a lush-looking hooker (Anita Barone) to cheer up Carl in the back of his spacious van. That she turns out to be a high-school girlfriend that Carl had dumped 15 years earlier carries the plot past the predictably misfired robbery attempt. Too romantic by far, “Running Time” is nevertheless stylishly adroit, well-acted and certainly entertaining. (310) 394-9741.

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The Gascon Center Theater, 8737 Washington Blvd., Culve City, is screening Monday at 8 p.m. Paul Bojack’s “Glass, Necktie,” a tale of sexual shenanigans centering on two brothers, Mike (Eugene Buica) and Alan (Kirk Stricker). Mike and his wife have a kinky relationship that involves others while Alan mistakenly believes he knows his brother through and through and feels he therefore must defend Mike’s honor when he assumes Mike’s wife is having an affair on the sly. Bojack is an ingenious plotter and has a good grasp of human nature, but he needs to understand that these people aren’t very interesting and are consequently hard to care about. Newcomer Stricker has a striking, commanding presence. “Glass, Necktie” looks good and has a mood-enhancing Mark Mothersbaugh score. (310) 204-3126.

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Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s “La Promesse,” which was voted best foreign film of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., returns for 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday screenings at the Monica 4-Plex. “La Promesse” is the story of a 15-year-old youth (Jeremie Renier) torn between his devotion to his father and his sense of what is right. (310) 394-9741.

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Kevin Thomas reviewed “Shoah” for The Times in 1985. This column contains excerpts of that review.