Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection

Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection
by V?ctor Erice

List Price: ~~$39.95~~
Our Price: $24.99
You Save: $14.96 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $23.50 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases

Compare Prices for Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection

Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

DVD Cover Information

Actor: Ana Torrent, Fernando Fern?n G?mez, Isabel Teller?a, Ketty de la C?mara, Teresa Gimpera
Director: V?ctor Erice
Brand: Image Entertainment
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: The Perfect Child's-eye perspective
Summary: 5 Stars

A wide-eyed little girl in Spain c. 1940 tries to make sense of adult issues, including the quietly unhappy marriage of her parents and the abstraction of death. For her everything - starting with a viewing of James Whale's Frankenstein - has magical significance, and everything connects. She has an older sister, further along the road to self-knowledge and loss of innocence; the younger one is only at the very beginning of that road.

Beehive is an absolutely accomplished portrayal of a child's perspective on the world as a numinous place. To be so young is to live inside a series of mysteries - that's why it's not always clear what's going on - and also to see everything with new eyes - that's why the most quotidian objects and gestures in Beehive possess beauty. The cinematography is accordingly outstanding, it's a film of warm honey colours and immense landscapes - it's shot on the rolling Castilian plain - that objectify the huge unknowns of a child's world.

This Spanish movie routinely turns up on European all-time great lists, but is little known here. This probably has something to do with the politics of distribution, and also perhaps with the fact that the director, Victor Erice, has only made three films in over 30 years. This was his first, and it's a phenomenal debut. It deserves to be much better known.

As this is a Criterion DVD release, the transfer is pristine, the extras informative. The one thing they don't tell you is how the director got such extraordinary performances out of the children, especially the five-year-old Ana Torrent, who plays the younger one with a quiet conviction that De Niro would envy.

Write your own review

More Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6

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

Art House & International DVD Video

Drama

DVD Video

Movies most talked about in Great Movies

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)
Release date: 2004-03-09; DVD
Best price: $58.18
Price in other shops: ~~$99.98~~

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 1 (Modern Times / The Great Dictator / The Gold Rush / Limelight)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2003-07-01; DVD
Best price: $44.97
Price in other shops: ~~$79.98~~

Aki Kaurism?ki's Proletariat Trilogy (Shadows in Paradise / Ariel / The Match Factory Girl)
Release date: 2008-09-23; DVD
Best price: $27.99
Price in other shops: ~~$44.95~~

Spirit of the Beehive - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-09-19; DVD
Best price: $27.17
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

Austin Powers - International Man of Mystery (New Line Platinum Series)
MYERS,MIKE; Release date: 2004-06-01; DVD
Best price: $2.94
Price in other shops: ~~$14.96~~

Welcome to the Dollhouse
Release date: 1999-08-03; DVD
Best price: $13.54
Price in other shops: ~~$24.96~~

The Lord Of The Rings - The Motion Picture Trilogy (Widescreen Edition)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-05-25; DVD
Best price: $16.00
Price in other shops: ~~$37.98~~

Gladiator (Widescreen Edition)
CROWE/PHOENIX/NIELSEN; Release date: 2003-08-19; DVD
Best price: $12.00
Price in other shops: ~~$19.99~~

The Shining (Two-Disc Special Edition) Image

The Shining (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Release date: 2007-10-23; DVD
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops: ~~$20.98~~

The Wicker Man (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Release date: 2006-12-19; DVD
Best price: $7.49
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

Similar DVD Movies

Bicycle Thieves (Criterion Collection)
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2007-02-13; DVD
Best price: $26.99
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

Breathless - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2007-10-23; DVD
Best price: $27.04
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

The Devil's Backbone (Special Edition)
Sony; Release date: 2004-07-27; DVD
Best price: $7.62
Price in other shops: ~~$14.94~~

Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2007-05-15; DVD
Best price: $27.04
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

Pandora's Box - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-11-28; DVD
Best price: $25.10
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

Viridiana - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-05-23; DVD
Best price: $20.17
Price in other shops: ~~$29.95~~

The Double Life of Veronique - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-11-21; DVD
Best price: $22.50
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

Pan's Labyrinth (New Line Two-Disc Platinum Series)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2007-05-15; DVD
Best price: $6.73
Price in other shops: ~~$34.98~~