Chaney Shows Raw Power in ‘The Penalty’

There is a raw, primitive power to “The Penalty” (1920), which screens Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Silent Movie, that makes this Lon Chaney film even more electrifying than “The Phantom of the Opera,” which after all is horror at its most romantic. It’s as compelling as it is unsettling to watch Chaney jamming himself into a leather contraption (long on display the County Museum of Science and Industry) to play a legless criminal. He is bent upon avenging himself against the doctor who amputated his legs above the knees when he was a child and, by extension, against all of society. Playing with it is another Chaney rarity, “Shadows.” (213) 653-2389.

Webster’s tells us, succinctly, that surrealism is “a modern movement in art and literature in which an attempt is made to portray or interpret the workings of the unconscious mind as manifested in dreams; it is characterized by an irrational, non-contextual arrangement of material.” That hasn’t stopped Seattle experimentalist Karl Krogstad from having fun trying to define it in his jaunty, ambitious and stimulating one-hour “Surrealism,” which screens Saturday at the Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third Street Promenade, at its 9 p.m. show in its ongoing “Documental” series--there’s an entirely different program at 7 p.m.

Krogstad bombards us with a flurry of definitions from learned talking heads, vignettes in the surrealist mode--some in animation--and a pithy history of this movement between world wars. It was led by writer Andre Breton and taken up by, among many others, Man Ray (in photography), Dali (in painting) and Bunuel (in film). Krogstad himself tells us that surrealism is all about rage, others speak of liberation and the total sexual fulfillment it advocated, but scholar Wallace Fowlie seems most on the money when he describes it as a form of shock treatment “to pull us out of our own lethargy, bringing the secrets of the soul to the surface.”

Information: (310) 393-2923.

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Spanish Surprise: Among the films screening this week in the ongoing “Refiguring Spain” series at USC is Jose Luis Borau’s 1987 “Tata Mia” (Nanny Dear), screening Sunday at 5 p.m. in Norris Theater. We’re so used to seeing films dealing with the Franco years seriously, often tragically, or as the subject of dark satire that this much lighter treatment comes as something of a surprise.

It marks a sentimental gathering of three beloved stars of three different eras: Imperio Argentina, singing star of the ‘40s; comedian Alfredo Landa, who came to prominence in the ‘60s, and the great Almodovar discovery, Carmen Maura.

Maura stars a nun who leaves the convent after 17 years to meet with an English biographer of her late father, a rich, aristocratic general, only to discover quite swiftly that she wants to stay out in the post-Franco world that greets her. She clashes instantly with her ultra-conservative brother over how their father’s image is to be preserved--”To have been jailed under Franco is an honor!” she exclaims--and demands her rightful portion of her father’s estate.

Argentina’s warm and loving “Tata” tries to keep the peace; Landa is the onetime boy-next-door grown into sweetly eccentric middle age. (The film’s key setting is a baronial old Madrid apartment house). “Tata Mia,” which recalls the spirit of ‘30s comedies about the vicissitudes of the rich, is slight, even improbable in its finish, but its cast is beguiling.

Information: (213) 740-5896.

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Aussie Works: Also continuing is the UCLA Film Archive’s “Strictly Oz,” a retrospective look at Australian film. Screening alongside more familiar titles is John Heyer’s 66-minute 1954 “Back of the Beyond” (Sunday at roughly 8:45 p.m.) in which Heyer follows burly, affable mailman Tom Kruse on his route along the Birdsville Track, more trail than highway, across a portion of Australia’s Central Desert, bigger than Europe itself.

Based in Marree, barely a bump in the road, Kruse regularly travels in his old truck more than 300 miles--one way--to the larger Birdsville. Kruse and others are a tad self-conscious in playing themselves, but they are a hearty, likable lot, with everyone always willing to help. “Back of the Beyond,” which abounds in beautifully composed vistas, is preceded at 7 p.m. by “Jedda” (1955), the first Australian feature in which the leading Aborigine characters were actually played by Aborigines.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.