‘Spanish Cinema’ at USC, Italian Studio’s Films at UCLA

“Women and Sexual Repression” is the theme of Friday’s program in USC’s ongoing “Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Family and Gender.” It is composed of Miguel Pizcazo’s “Tia Tula,” a 1964 adaptation of a Miguel de Unamuno novel, and Jaime de Arminan’s “At the Service of Spanish Womanhood,” a 1978 response to the new freedoms of the post-Franco era. They screen at 7:30 p.m. in Cinema and Television Center Room 108.

“Tia Tula” is a real stunner, both in its psychological insight and in the succession of remarkable images with which it expresses a sexual tragedy that takes place in a small provincial Spanish city. A young mother dies, her elegant sister, Tula (Aurora Bautista), moves in with her handsome brother-in-law, Ramiro (Carlos Estrada), to care for his young daughter and adolescent son in a small apartment. (Significantly, its decor has been unchanged since the turn of the century.)

It’s only natural that Ramiro becomes attracted to the capable Tula, but she would rather that he “kiss the ground she walks on” than her. Not even her confessor can persuade her that it is not a sin for a widower to marry his late wife’s sister; beneath this is Tula’s clear and fevered conviction that sex is dirty anyway. The saddest irony of this complex, acutely observed, deeply sensual and continually surprising film is that it leaves you feeling that for the children at least things turn out for the best.

“At the Service of Spanish Womanhood” is not the visual triumph that “Tia Tula” is, but it is bizarre and fascinating in its own way. A rich factory owner (Adolfo Marsillach) who may or may not be homosexual--again the setting is a small town--commences an ambiguous pursuit of a woman (Marilina Ross) who for nine years has had a radio show for women in which she preaches traditional values for every problem her listeners present her. She’s a likable but unconsciously reactionary version of Dr. Joyce Brothers and has had almost no emotional experience of her own to draw upon. (She lives in a grandiose apartment with her older sister, a woman who shares some of the repressiveness of Tia Tula.) De Arminan’s film is no less than a call to the Spanish people to throw over the Franco era shackles of prudery and sexual guilt.

Saturday brings a premiere (at 7:30 in Norris Theater) of Pedro Almodovar’s rambling, predictably outrageous 1980 debut film, “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap,” which has vaguely to do with Pepi (Carmen Maura, from the start Almodovar’s favorite actress) attempting to regain her virginity.

Messy but fun, the film is very John Waters, with punk drop-out types trying to shock us. It will be followed by another film yet to be announced. Screening Sunday at 7:30 in Norris Theater is Jaime Camino’s “Old Memory,” a taxing, comprehensive and altogether remarkable 165-minute documentary in which surviving key players in the short-lived Spanish Republic and consequent Civil War take us step by step through this tumultuous era, accompanied with an exceedingly precise use of stills and newsreel footage. Information: (213) 743-6071.

“Cinecitta: Fifty Years,” a celebration of half a century of Rome’s most famous studio composed of some of the most notable films shot (all or in part) on its 12 sound stages, continues at UCLA Melnitz Theater with a 6 p.m. Saturday screening of Luchino Visconti’s shimmering adaptation from Dostoevsky, “White Nights” (1957), in which the director has captured Dostoevsky’s passion for life in a truly romantic film.

Maria Schell is the shy, beautiful Natalia, awaiting for her lover (Jean Marais) to return, and Marcello Mastroianni is the lonely man who enters her life unexpectedly. Among the important films screening Sunday are Roberto Rossellini’s “General Della Rovere” (1959), starring a memorable Vittorio De Sica as a con man transformed by the Resistance hero he impersonates, and the rarely seen “Le Amiche,” a superb 1955 Michelangelo Antonioni film centering on five young women of Turin’s upper-middle class, their friendships and the men in their lives. For full schedule: (213) 206-FILM, 206-8013.