By BRUCE DANCIS, Scripps Howard News Service

City Island is a little enclave in the Bronx, a neighborhood of fishermen, seafood restaurants and (mostly) Italian-Americans living only a few miles, but worlds away, from the bustle of New York City. City Island may have gotten a bit more racially and ethnically integrated in recent decades, but it still looks remarkably like it did 50 years ago.

"Black Orpheus," Marcel Camus' 1959 film set in Brazil, gave the world one of the first cinematic glimpses of multiracial Brazil and the physical beauty of Rio de Janeiro, introduced bossa nova to an international audience and told a luminous, unforgettable and tragic love story.

Ryan O'Neal is no Cary Grant. And despite her formidable talents, no one will every confuse Barbra Streisand with Katharine Hepburn. Yet in 1972's "What's Up, Doc?," Peter Bogdanovich's tribute to screwball comedies in general and Grant, Hepburn and director Howard Hawks' "Bringing Up Baby" in particular, O'Neal and Streisand -- and Bogdanovich -- more than hold their own.

Movies often take viewers behind the scenes to show us how art and entertainment is created. For instance, "42nd Street," the Lloyd Bacon-Busby Berkeley musical from the early 1930s, told the inside story of a Broadway musical production, while Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's "Singin' in the Rain" gloriously celebrated the transformation of Hollywood films from silents to talkies.

It's one of the most famous and daring shots in movie history: The stone-faced man stands in front of a building during a hurricane. The wind hits the building and blows its entire side down upon him. But instead of being smashed to smithereens, the man emerges unscathed because he had been standing precisely where an open window had been.

If only the makers of "Creation" had the courage of conviction of their subject, Charles Darwin.

Perhaps in the hands of different filmmakers the science of discovery and the arduous process Darwin took in writing his world-changing "On the Origin of Species" might have provided rich enough subject matter for a film to be both educationally and artistically challenging.

"Night Train to Munich" was not directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but the stylish espionage thriller has been linked to the Master of Suspense ever since its release in 1940. While a new DVD of the film reveals many connections to Hitchcock and his body of work, it also demonstrates the obvious talent of young English director Carol Reed and his fine cast (Criterion Collection, $29.95, not rated).

Two British TV series that have enjoyed considerable success in the United States -- "Life," a new nature program; and "Foyle's War, Set 6," the return of an old and reliable English police detective -- are this week's DVD highlights.

When John Ford made "Stagecoach" in 1939, the Hollywood director had already been making movies for two decades and had one Oscar (for 1935's "The Informer") to his credit.

Sometimes a swashbuckler is just a swashbuckler.