The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painleve (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French fillmmaker-scientist-inventer had a decades-spanning career in which he create hundreds of short films on subjects rangin from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marin-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin.