Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection
by V?ctor Erice, Carlos Rodr?guez
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ana Torrent, El?as Querejeta, Fernando Fern?n G?mez, Teresa Gimpera, V?ctor EriceDirector: Carlos Rodr?guez, V?ctor Erice
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: V?ctor Erice
Producer: El?as Querejeta
Producer: Isabel Lapuerta
Writer: Carlos F. Heredero
Writer: Francisco J. Querejeta
Writer: ?ngel Fern?ndez Santos
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Silence has never been so loud...
Summary: 5 Stars
Some films are just so amazing that one cannot put into words just how truly remarkable the film really is. `El Espiritu de la Colmena' is one of those films. There are few words spoken throughout the film, but the rich imagery and the delicate handling of the childlike revelations are so full of life and meaning that words become obsolete.
So, much like the film, I'll try and expose depth in this review without the use of too many words.
The film takes place in the early 1940's when two young girls living in a small Spanish village attend a showing of James Whale's 1931 classic horror film `Frankenstein'. Upon leaving the showing young Ana is visibly affected by what she has witnessed, but just how or why is rather ambiguous. She becomes obsessed with finding the monster, a creature her sister Isabel has sworn is still alive and living close by. The film shifts focus between reality and fantasy as Ana searches outwardly as well as internally for Frankenstein.
Shortly after watching this film I sat down to watch another foreign masterpiece entitled `Ivan's Childhood' and both films are very similar in structure and even meaning. Both use visual's over dialog to propel the films core, both balancing reality and fantasy in order to build two sides to a very complex and moving story.
Using the awe-inspiring Ana Torrent (merely six-years-old) as his star, director Victor Erice did his film a major service for it is this young girl who really sells this film for the audience. Not only is she adorable (she looks almost identical to my daughter, so maybe I'm a tad partial) but her otherworldly stare and her ambiguous nature makes for so many beautiful moments of sincere emotional humanity within the films frames. She captures the childlike innocence, naivety and wonderment that is so essential to propelling the films central focus. She embodies this young girl by refraining from acting and just simply `being'.
The film is one that may be hard to read and it may require multiple viewings to truly understand what all this film has to say. What is so mesmerizing about this film is that it can be taken many different ways (as can the meaning behind the films title, which is pure genius if you ask me) and so the films interpretation is pretty open ended. A film like this can be enjoyed and contemplated and discussed for all eternity for there is no right or wrong answer when considering the films overall meaning. What this film is for me can be totally removed from what it is to you, but in the end as long as it becomes something then it has done its job.
It is rare to find a film so poetically fascinating in a sea full of depressingly mundane cinematic endeavors. This has been heralded as the best film to come out of Spain, and personally I'd take it a step further.
This is one of the best films to come out of anywhere.
Summary of Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is proud to present V?ctor Erice's spellbinding The Spirit of the Beehive, widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s. In a small Castilian village in 1940, directly following the country's devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes haunted by her memory of it. Produced as Franco's long regime was nearing its end, The Spirit of the Beehive is both a bewitching portrait of a child's inner life and an elusive, cloaked meditation of a nation trapped under tyranny-from one of cinema's most mysterious auteurs.Victor Erice's hauntingly beautiful The Spirit of the Beehive features one of the most unforgettable child performances in the history of cinema. Hailed as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s, Erice's visually elegant "poem of awakening" takes place in a small Castilian village in the early 1940s, as echoes of the Spanish Civil Wart can still be heard throughout the countryside. It is here, in this richly rural atmosphere, that six-year-old Ana (played by six-year-old Ana Torrent) is introduced to alternate world of myth and imagination when she attends a town-hall showing of James Whale's Frankenstein, an experience that forever alters young Ana's perception of the world around her... and her ability to mold reality to her own imaginative purposes. Is she using her imagination to escape what is essentially a bleak reality, or is she protecting herself with an inner world of innocence, to counter the darker worldview of her slightly older sister Isabel? While her emotionally distant parents go about their mundane daily affairs, Ana's world becomes the film's mesmerizing focus, and The Spirit of the Beehive unfolds as an enigmatic yet totally captivating study of childhood unfettered by the strictures of reason. In Erice's capable hands, young Ana Torrent really isn't performing at all; her presence on screen is so natural, and so deeply expressive, that you almost feel as if she's living in the story being told--a story that retains its mystery and beauty in equal measure, full of visual symbolism and metaphor (including the title, which yields multiple meanings), yet never self-consciously "arty" or artificial. Simply put, this is one of the timeless masterpieces of cinema, produced at a time when Franco's repressive dictatorship was finally giving way to greater freedoms of expression. No survey of international cinema is complete without at least one viewing of this uniquely moving film. --Jeff Shannon
On the DVDs
Disc 1 presents a new, restored high-definition digital transfer of The Spirit of the Beehive, with a new and improved English subtitle translation. The supplements on Disc 2 are thoroughly fascinating, beginning with "The Footprints of a Spirit," a very well-made documentary about the making of the film, combining present-day (2006) visits to the film's original locations along with interviews with director Victor Erice, producer El?as Querejeta, coscreenwriter ?ngel Fern?ndez Santos, and actress Ana Torrent (now a beautiful 40-year-old veteran of many Spanish films). "Victor Erice in Madrid" is an extensive and thought-provoking interview, conducted by Japanese filmmaker Hideyuki Miyaoka, in which Erice discusses his films, and specifically The Spirit of the Beehive, including his observation that the film's shot of young Ana Torrent watching Frankenstein for the first time (a real-life reaction filmed with documentary realism) represents "the most important moment I have ever captured on film." Two other 2006 interviews round out the supplements: One with the great Spanish actor Fernando Fern?n G?mez (who describes how he "couldn't understand a word" of the Beehive screenplay, but played the role of Ana's father because he needed the work), and another with scholar Linda C. Ehrlich, who astutely discusses the film's visual qualities (including its warm color palette and the influence of Vermeer's paintings on Erice's sunlit interiors), the significance of Frankenstein to the story, and the qualities that made The Spirit of the Beehive both timely (in terms of its sociopolitical context) and timeless. The accompanying booklet contains an informative essay on the lasting influence of Erice's film, including the startling revelation that Erice (as of 2006) had directed only two more feature-length films (El Sur and the documentary Dream of Light) since The Spirit of the Beehive was released in 1973. --Jeff Shannon
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