In the Catbird Seat/Joe Kirkish

While Hollywood's lavish, action-oriented films are ubiquitous, we tend to forget that hundreds of exceptional movies have been made overseas; they exploded on the world market with the likes of the New Realism films of Italy in the '40s, the Swedish character-heavy films of the '50s, the New Wave of Czechoslovakia and France in the '60s, the dazzling innovations from Down Under in the '70s and historical epics from Japan during the '80s. Then came the exotic, personal films from the Middle East and Western Asia, with small budget films from less known but thrillingly new cinematic experiments in Africa, South America and all of Scandinavia to the present.

Focusing on Czechoslovakia and its movie industry, strongly plagued with political disruptions ever since its emergence as an independent country on Oct. 30, 1918: The blended nation early found world acceptance in its arts, particularly in its movies, so personally involved with their internal changes as they were.

As early as 1933 it shocked the world when a teenage Hedy Lamaar made her notorious nude swim scene in "Ecstasy." Twenty-three years later, a political satire, "The Good Soldier Schweik," broke records in world theatres for its barbed wit. In the '60s, with the country dominated by Nazis, soon to be run over by Communist Russia, Czech filmmakers rose to dominance with a curious blend of sex and military suppression as their focus.

When filmmaker Milos Forman fled to America for a celebrated career with amusing, satirical films, another Czech remained to take over the film scene. Jiri Menzel's works contained a more visible style than Forman's - a semi-sweet lightness with a penchant for quirky humor. His greatest work, and indeed the pinnacle of all Czech New Wave films, "Closely Watched Trains," became, among many international awards, including an Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 1966.

Those Eastern Europeans and their black comedies! Would anyone else but Menzel dare to create a lyrical tragic-comedy about the attempts of a nave young apprentice train-dispatcher at sexual initiation while an underground resistance team makes plans to blow up an approaching Nazi ammunition train? Not likely.

"Closely Watched Trains" established the film and Czech filmmaking for a decade of fame, with "Trains" becoming listed in Richard Corliss and Schickle's "100 Best Films," and Time Magazine's comment that the film was "a series of wonderful contradictions: a tragic comedy, a peaceful war, a success story of a failure."

A real charmer from Czech's New Wave, "Trains" is set during the German occupation, but totally immersed in the pubescent problems of the youth and the station's personnel, all of whom resolve to do as little work as possible while engaging in illicit fun in the back room. The sleepy little backwater depot, about to face its first real wartime challenge, is ironically alive with such pleasures. One guard spends his time rubber-stamping the hindquarters of a delighted girl while trying to avoid the station-master (who emerges now and again to cry "Sodom and Gomorrah" before returning to his beloved pigeons.

The movie is an airy, inoffensive comedy that celebrates a whole universe of frustration, eroticism, adventure and romance. This charming little tidbit also comes as the November Club Indigo on Friday the 13th, celebrating what has been labeled as the cream of the New Wave films.

The movie will be shown at 7:15 p.m., preceded at 6 p.m. by an Eastern European buffet prepared by - surprise! - chef Malcolm Hudson, whose brief return is in time to practice once again his already proven culinary skills. Cost for both will still be $18; movie alone, $5. For the buffet, a call made to the Calumet Theatre (337-2610) during winter hours, Wednesday through Friday, will assure seating.

Sponsor for "Closely Watched Trains" is Thermoanalytics, Inc., Franklin Township.

Rotten Tomatoes averages: "This is It," 89% fresh; "Paranormal Activity," 85% fresh.