Spirit of the Beehive
by V?ctor Erice
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Product details
Actor: Ana Torrent, Fernando Fern?n G?mez, Isabel Teller?a, Ketty de la C?mara, Teresa GimperaDirector: V?ctor Erice
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, Letterboxed, NTSC
Running Time: 93 minutes
Release Date: 2000-06-16
Audience Rating: Unrated
Publisher: Homevision
Studio: Homevision
VHS Movie Reviews of Spirit of the Beehive
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.
Movie Review: Through Ana's eyes: a masterpiece of childhood
Summary: 5 Stars
Every once in a while I stumble upon a masterpiece. This is a masterpiece of childhood set in Franco's Spain in 1940. There are political allusions and asides that somehow escaped Franco's censors, or maybe they were indulged. It matters not because the bleak landscape surrounding the house with its honeycombed windows and its honey colored light says more than words could.
I would compare this favorably with two other masterpieces of childhood, the French films, Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games) (1952), and Ponette (1996) What is explored in all three of these films is the reality of childhood that we have forgotten, the intensity of first knowledge, of things experienced for the first time, the wonder and the horror that such experiences may contain. But more than that there is the unconditioned sense of life that the child experiences. When Ana sees the fugitive (from Franco, one imagines) who has injured his leg jumping off the train, she immediately knows what is essential in this situation. The man is hurt. He is hungry. He needs help. She gives him an apple from her lunch pail, which he eagerly devours. Although she has been scared by a Frankenstein movie and her sister's pretence of death and gloved hands around her face, she is not afraid.
This is the most laconic of films. Almost everything is done with the camera and the events. The children laugh and play and watch the world with wonder. They say a few words, direct and to the point. Six year old Ana (Ana Torrent) has dark eyes as big as saucers which she trains on the world as if to bore into the very nature of existence. Her older sister Isabel's eyes sometimes form slits of mischief or delight as she tests reality or teases her sister.
The pace of the film is deliberately slow. The essay by famed Spanish film expert Paul Julian Smith contained in the booklet accompanying the Criterion Collection two-disc set includes Smith's remark that when the film was first shown in San Sebastian in 1973 where it won the main prize, "Some of the audience, restless at the film's slow pace, even booed."
There is a technique in the theater, not so much observed today, that also works well in movies. Slow it down, begin with everyday, mundane events, and play them long like honey slowly oozing, so much the better to contrast with the events to come, and give those events the contrast they deserve as they have in real life. Director Victor Erice does this to fine effect. How drawn out seem the lessons at school, and how tedious. But such is the life of a child when every day is a little eternity, where so much happens that when the lights go out, the child falls into a deep, dreamless sleep for many hours at a stretch. We have forgotten this world of the child, but Erice reminds us.
I was not restless because, although the pace is indeed slow, the cinematography by Luis Cuadrado and the terse silent events of innocence set against the background of the late Spanish Civil War portended events to come. Just what those events might be it was impossible to guess; however it was clear there would be no compromise with audience expectations or any catering to any sort of correctness, political or otherwise. And this is part of what makes a great film.
Character, story, suspense, an important theme, beautiful visuals, truth--artistic truth of course, psychological human truth--and attention to detail: these are also what make a great film. And they are all here in El esp?ritu de la colmena.
Erice plays with our emotions of course. We are nearly terrified that something is going to happen to these beautiful little girls, and indeed once or twice it appears that our worst fears are realized. Are they or are they not?
It is said that Ana was traumatized by viewing the Frankenstein movie and by her sister's horrid joke, and then by the blood she sees in the old building by the well where the fugitive had rested. But I think it would be better to say that Ana was challenged by new-found knowledge of the ever close proximity of death, and in reaction she ran away into her own world to find an answer. Notice how the scene from James Wales' Frankenstein in which the monster kneels beside the water with the little girl is repeated in Ana's fantasy, and how she looks at the monster with big, wide-open, questioning, waiting eyes. What is life, and what is death? And, know this: I will always live in fear and dread if I do not know what they are and if cannot face them.
When she encounters the Frankenstein monster at the water's edge she has only her beauty to protect her. But that beauty resides in our head--in Frankenstein's head--and so she is safe. This is part of the deep psychology of the film, wondrously achieved, perhaps part by art and part by happenstance.
I believe that is what Ana experienced in her mind. But we do not know. We do not know the mind of the child. And we have forgotten what it is to be a child. Erice's masterpiece helps us to remember.
There is a documentary about the film on the second disc with interviews with Erice and with Angel Fernandez Santos who worked with Erice on the script, and others. We see Ana Torrent all grown up, which is what I most wanted to see. And we learn how the film was made. A masterpiece, it is my belief, whether it is in cinema or literature, in chess or music, or in some other art form always brings together unconscious elements that fuse with conscious intent. It is only later that we recognize what happened.
Movie Review: don't get stung
Summary: 3 Stars
I should start by saying that before seeing this film I knew nothing about Spanish cinema. And now that I have seen it I feel I know even less. I bought the DVD (a mistake) because I respect the Criterion Collection and the blurb on the back of the box made it sound interesting (also I had a discount coupon burning a hole in my pocket). There is no point in giving away the plot - which is quite sparse. The acting by the two little girls is very good. Audiences should be warned that there is an unpleasant scene involving a house cat. I don't know how many million people were killed in the Spanish Civil War; not a single one of those deaths upsets me because they are just abstractions. But when you hurt a cat you stroke my fur the wrong way. The movie takes place after this war and references to it are indirect and (to an ignorant foreigner like me) rather obscure. I have read some of the other reviews here and it amazes me that some people love this film. I suppose with love there are no explanations. If you still are thinking about seeing this film, rent it but don't buy it. I hope that you can find meanings in it which are apparently beyond my simple view.
Movie Review: One of those "cinematic treasures" that broke my concentration
Summary: 3 Stars
Sorry, I bought this and tried to appreciate it. The Spirit of the Beehive is widely regarded as a supreme classic in Spanish film literature. Plus I love Criterion films, but this time I just couldn't catch the significance. It's set in Spain 1940, where a young girl watches the classic movie Frankenstein and becomes entranced by the memory of it. And, uh well, that's pretty much it. The narrative simmers around her outlook and imagination as that character is engrained deeply in her mind.
This movie is beautifully shot, but there just isn't much going on. I really like slow paced movies, but I need a little something to hold my interest. This movie takes place after the country's devastating civil war, which I tried to factor in.
Overall, this is a unique film that will require some patience. Any comments or insight anyone has will be greatly appreciated.
Movie Review: Forbidden Game
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Spirit of the Beehive" (1973), an impressive cinematic debut by Victor Erice is a poignant study of a human isolation and fragile innocence. It is also about power of film, and its ability to affect and even change a life of a child. While watching the film, we can relieve our own childhood movie experiences and our own fascination and readiness for miracle to happen. At the same time, "The Spirit of the Beehive" is a thoughtful commentary on the tragedy of Spanish Civil War. Eight-year-old Ana Torrent gives an unforgettable performance as Ana, a lonely, quiet, dreamy little girl with wide-open dark sad eyes who enters the world of fantasy when she sees the famous 1931 film "Frankenstein". Ana becomes obsessed with Boris Karloff's good -bad monster, is convinced that he actually exists, and tries to find him. As her obsession grows, the world of her imagination becomes more and more real for her and most of the film's events take place inside her mind. "The Spirit of the Beehive" may be one of few most haunting films about childhood ever made, and it stands very close to Rene Clement's "Forbidden Games" (1951) - another disturbing exploration of the war and how it affects the gentlest, the weakest, and the most innocent - the children.
4.5/5
Summary of Spirit of the Beehive
Set in rural Spain in 1940, Victor Erice's (El Sur, Dream of Light) extraordinary debut film is a haunting portrait of the isolation of an introverted child within her own family. Ana Torrent is absolutely unforgettable as the lonely little girl who sees Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, and is convinced that the monster actually exists. Encouraged by her sister, she sets off into the woods to find him and becomes immersed in a mysterious and poetic imaginary world. A poignant exploration of the fragile innocence of childhood, The Spirit of the Beehive is Spanish cinema at its very best.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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