The Spirit of the Beehive
Encyclopedia
The Spirit of the Beehive (Spanish: El espíritu de la colmena) is a 1973 Spanish drama film
directed by Victor Erice
. The film was Erice's debut and is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema. Made during the last few years of Francisco Franco
's dictatorship
, and set in 1940, the film subtly criticises post-civil war
Spain
.
The film focuses on the young girl Ana and her fascination with the 1931 American horror film Frankenstein
, as well as exploring her family life and schooling. The film has been called a "bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life".
with her parents Fernando and Teresa and her older sister, Isabel. The year is 1940, and the civil war has just ended with the Francoist victory over the Republic
. Her aging father spends most of his time absorbed in tending to and writing about his beehives; her much younger mother is caught up in daydreams about a distant lover, to whom she writes letters. The entire family is never seen together in a single shot. Ana's closest companion is Isabel, who loves her but cannot resist playing on her little sister's gullibility.
At the beginning of the film, a mobile cinema
brings Frankenstein
to the village and the two sisters go to see it. Ana finds the film more interesting than frightening, particularly the scene where the monster
plays benignly with a little girl, then accidentally kills her. She asks her sister, "Why did he kill the girl, and why did they kill him after that?" Isabel tells her that the monster didn't kill the girl and isn't really dead; she says that everything in films is fake. Isabel says the monster is like a spirit, and Ana can talk to him if she closes her eyes and calls him: "It's me, Ana".
Ana's fascination with the story increases when Isabel takes her to a desolate abandoned sheepfold, which she claims is the monster's house. Ana returns alone many times to look for him but finds only a large footprint. One day, Isabel screams from a distant part of the house, and when Ana comes to investigate, she lies perfectly still on the floor, pretending to be dead. That night, Ana sneaks out and while looking at the night sky, closes her eyes. In the next scene, a fugitive republican soldier leaps from a passing train and limps to the sheepfold to hide.
Ana finds the soldier hiding in the sheepfold. Instead of running away in terror, she feeds him and even brings him her father's coat and watch. This odd, wordless friendship ends abruptly when the Francoist police come in the night, find the republican soldier and shoot him. The police soon connect Ana's father with the fugitive and assume he stole the items from him. The father discovers which of the daughters had helped the fugitive by noticing Ana's reaction when he produces the pocket watch she had given to him. When Ana next goes to visit him, she finds him gone and fresh blood on the ground. Her father confronts her as she gazes at the blood, and she runs away.
While she is wandering in the woods alone that night, she finds a poisonous mushroom her father previously said will kill anyone who eats it. It is not clear if she does so but she later has a vision of the monster; he gazes sadly at her, as in the 1931 film, and kneels beside her as she looks down into water. We see Teresa read and burn a letter, implying the love affair is over.
A search party finds Ana physically unharmed the next morning, but she withdraws from her family, refusing to speak or eat. The doctor assures her mother that she will gradually forget the shock she's just experienced. Teresa is shown caring for Fernando after he falls asleep at his desk. At the end of the film, Ana recalls what Isabel said about calling the monster, and she stands alone by her bedroom window and closes her eyes.
that overthrew a democratically elected leftist government. The war split families and left a society divided and intimidated into silence in the years following the civil war. The film was made in 1973, when the regime was not as severe as it had been at the beginning; however it was still not possible to be openly critical of the regime
. Artists in all media in Spain had already managed to slip material critical of the regime past the censor. Most notable is the director Luis Buñuel
who shot Viridiana
there in 1962. By making films rich in symbolism and subtlety, a message could be embodied in a film that would be accepted or missed by the censor's office..
The barren empty landscape around the sheepfold represents Spain's isolation during the beginning years of the Francoist regime.
At several points in the film Fernando describes in his writing his revulsion at the mindless activity of the beehive, this is possibly an allusion to human society under Fascism; ordered, organised, but devoid of any imagination. The beehive theme is carried into the manor house which has hexagonal panes to its leaded windows and a honey-coloured light.
At the start of the film, the authorities are using the Frankenstein film as a warning to the population about man's godless creations which have to be killed for the safety of the public. This is a veiled propaganda attempt to justify the violent overthrow of the elected government in the civil war by intimating the monster to be the "godless" socialism of the Republic. This metaphor is repeated later in the film when the hunted republican soldier takes on a role similar to that of the monster in the 1931 film. When Ana calls on the spirit of the monster to return, she is symbolically calling on the spirit of the Republic to return.
Ana represents the innocent young generation of Republican Spain around 1940, while her sister's Isabel deceitful advice symbolises the Nationalists who are obsessed with money and power.
As the film closes we see a warming of Teresa's feelings and the possibility of a future revival of the family's emotional life and by inference the life of Spain.
, Castilla y León, Spain.
The four main characters each have a first name identical to that of the actor/actress playing them. This is because Ana, at her young age of five at the time of filming was confused by the on and off screen naming. Erice simply changed the script to adopt the actors names for the characters.
Victor Erice wrote of his choice of title, "The title really is not mine. It is taken from a book, in my opinion the most beautiful thing ever written about the life of bees, written by the great poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck
. In that work, Maeterlinck uses the expression 'The Spirit of the Beehive' to name the powerful, enigmatic and paradoxical force that the bees seem to obey, and that the reason of man has never come to understand".
The film's cinematographer, Luis Cuadrado, was going blind
during filming.
in early 2007, A.O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times
, reviewed the film and lauded the direction of the drama, writing, "The story that emerges from [Erice's] lovely, lovingly considered images is at once lucid and enigmatic, poised between adult longing and childlike eagerness, sorrowful knowledge and startled innocence."
Film critic Dan Callahan praised the film's cinematography, story, direction and acting. He wrote, "Every magic hour, light-drenched image in Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive is filled with mysterious dread...There's something voluptuous about the cinematography, and this suits the sense of emerging sexuality in the girls, especially in the scene where Isabel speculatively paints her lips with blood from her own finger...[and] Torrent, with her severe, beautiful little face, provides an eerily unflappable presence to center the film. The one time she smiles, it's like a small miracle, a glimpse of grace amid the uneasiness of black cats, hurtling black trains, devouring fire and poisonous mushrooms. These signs of dismay haunt the movie."
Currently, the film has a 100 percent "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes
, based on eighteen reviews.
Ranked #23 in Empire
magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Victor Erice
Víctor Erice
Víctor Erice Aras is a Spanish film director.He studied law, political science, and economics at the University of Madrid. He also attended the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografia in 1963 to study film direction...
. The film was Erice's debut and is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema. Made during the last few years of Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
, and set in 1940, the film subtly criticises post-civil war
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
.
The film focuses on the young girl Ana and her fascination with the 1931 American horror film Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
, as well as exploring her family life and schooling. The film has been called a "bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life".
Plot
Six-year-old Ana is a shy girl who lives in the manor house in an isolated Spanish village on the Castille plateauCastile (historical region)
A former kingdom, Castile gradually merged with its neighbours to become the Crown of Castile and later the Kingdom of Spain when united with the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre...
with her parents Fernando and Teresa and her older sister, Isabel. The year is 1940, and the civil war has just ended with the Francoist victory over the Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
. Her aging father spends most of his time absorbed in tending to and writing about his beehives; her much younger mother is caught up in daydreams about a distant lover, to whom she writes letters. The entire family is never seen together in a single shot. Ana's closest companion is Isabel, who loves her but cannot resist playing on her little sister's gullibility.
At the beginning of the film, a mobile cinema
Mobile cinema
A mobile cinema is a cinema on wheels.An example is the Screen machine Mobile Cinema of Scotland, which provides conventional up-to-date 35mm screenings of recent movies, with full digital surround sound, air conditioning, comfortable raked seating, and full disabled access...
brings Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
to the village and the two sisters go to see it. Ana finds the film more interesting than frightening, particularly the scene where the monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
plays benignly with a little girl, then accidentally kills her. She asks her sister, "Why did he kill the girl, and why did they kill him after that?" Isabel tells her that the monster didn't kill the girl and isn't really dead; she says that everything in films is fake. Isabel says the monster is like a spirit, and Ana can talk to him if she closes her eyes and calls him: "It's me, Ana".
Ana's fascination with the story increases when Isabel takes her to a desolate abandoned sheepfold, which she claims is the monster's house. Ana returns alone many times to look for him but finds only a large footprint. One day, Isabel screams from a distant part of the house, and when Ana comes to investigate, she lies perfectly still on the floor, pretending to be dead. That night, Ana sneaks out and while looking at the night sky, closes her eyes. In the next scene, a fugitive republican soldier leaps from a passing train and limps to the sheepfold to hide.
Ana finds the soldier hiding in the sheepfold. Instead of running away in terror, she feeds him and even brings him her father's coat and watch. This odd, wordless friendship ends abruptly when the Francoist police come in the night, find the republican soldier and shoot him. The police soon connect Ana's father with the fugitive and assume he stole the items from him. The father discovers which of the daughters had helped the fugitive by noticing Ana's reaction when he produces the pocket watch she had given to him. When Ana next goes to visit him, she finds him gone and fresh blood on the ground. Her father confronts her as she gazes at the blood, and she runs away.
While she is wandering in the woods alone that night, she finds a poisonous mushroom her father previously said will kill anyone who eats it. It is not clear if she does so but she later has a vision of the monster; he gazes sadly at her, as in the 1931 film, and kneels beside her as she looks down into water. We see Teresa read and burn a letter, implying the love affair is over.
A search party finds Ana physically unharmed the next morning, but she withdraws from her family, refusing to speak or eat. The doctor assures her mother that she will gradually forget the shock she's just experienced. Teresa is shown caring for Fernando after he falls asleep at his desk. At the end of the film, Ana recalls what Isabel said about calling the monster, and she stands alone by her bedroom window and closes her eyes.
Cast
- Fernando Fernán GómezFernando Fernán GómezFernando Fernán-Gómez was a Spanish actor and director. He was born in Lima, Peru as his mother, Spanish actress Carola Fernán-Gómez, was making a tour of Latin America. Inheriting his surname as a stage name, he moved to Spain in 1924.After the Spanish Civil War he began a study of Law but...
as Fernando - Teresa Gimpera as Teresa
- Ana TorrentAna TorrentAna Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
as Ana - Isabel Tellería as Isabel
- Ketty de la Cámara as Milagros, la criada
- Estanis González as Guardia civil
- José Villasante as The Frankenstein Monster
- Juan Margallo as The Fugitive
- Laly Soldevila as Doña Lucía, the teacher
- Miguel Picazo as the Doctor
Historical context
The General Franco came to power in Spain in 1939, after a bloody civil warSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
that overthrew a democratically elected leftist government. The war split families and left a society divided and intimidated into silence in the years following the civil war. The film was made in 1973, when the regime was not as severe as it had been at the beginning; however it was still not possible to be openly critical of the regime
Regime
The word regime refers to a set of conditions, most often of a political nature.-Politics:...
. Artists in all media in Spain had already managed to slip material critical of the regime past the censor. Most notable is the director Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
who shot Viridiana
Viridiana
Viridiana is a 1961 Spanish-Mexican motion picture, directed by Luis Buñuel and produced by Mexican Gustavo Alatriste. It is loosely based on Halma, a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós....
there in 1962. By making films rich in symbolism and subtlety, a message could be embodied in a film that would be accepted or missed by the censor's office..
Symbolism
The disintegration of the family's emotional life is symbolic of the emotional disintegration of the Spanish nation during the civil war.The barren empty landscape around the sheepfold represents Spain's isolation during the beginning years of the Francoist regime.
At several points in the film Fernando describes in his writing his revulsion at the mindless activity of the beehive, this is possibly an allusion to human society under Fascism; ordered, organised, but devoid of any imagination. The beehive theme is carried into the manor house which has hexagonal panes to its leaded windows and a honey-coloured light.
At the start of the film, the authorities are using the Frankenstein film as a warning to the population about man's godless creations which have to be killed for the safety of the public. This is a veiled propaganda attempt to justify the violent overthrow of the elected government in the civil war by intimating the monster to be the "godless" socialism of the Republic. This metaphor is repeated later in the film when the hunted republican soldier takes on a role similar to that of the monster in the 1931 film. When Ana calls on the spirit of the monster to return, she is symbolically calling on the spirit of the Republic to return.
Ana represents the innocent young generation of Republican Spain around 1940, while her sister's Isabel deceitful advice symbolises the Nationalists who are obsessed with money and power.
As the film closes we see a warming of Teresa's feelings and the possibility of a future revival of the family's emotional life and by inference the life of Spain.
Production
The location used was the village of Hoyuelos, SegoviaSegovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...
, Castilla y León, Spain.
The four main characters each have a first name identical to that of the actor/actress playing them. This is because Ana, at her young age of five at the time of filming was confused by the on and off screen naming. Erice simply changed the script to adopt the actors names for the characters.
Victor Erice wrote of his choice of title, "The title really is not mine. It is taken from a book, in my opinion the most beautiful thing ever written about the life of bees, written by the great poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
. In that work, Maeterlinck uses the expression 'The Spirit of the Beehive' to name the powerful, enigmatic and paradoxical force that the bees seem to obey, and that the reason of man has never come to understand".
The film's cinematographer, Luis Cuadrado, was going blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
during filming.
Critical reception
When the film was re-released in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in early 2007, A.O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, reviewed the film and lauded the direction of the drama, writing, "The story that emerges from [Erice's] lovely, lovingly considered images is at once lucid and enigmatic, poised between adult longing and childlike eagerness, sorrowful knowledge and startled innocence."
Film critic Dan Callahan praised the film's cinematography, story, direction and acting. He wrote, "Every magic hour, light-drenched image in Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive is filled with mysterious dread...There's something voluptuous about the cinematography, and this suits the sense of emerging sexuality in the girls, especially in the scene where Isabel speculatively paints her lips with blood from her own finger...[and] Torrent, with her severe, beautiful little face, provides an eerily unflappable presence to center the film. The one time she smiles, it's like a small miracle, a glimpse of grace amid the uneasiness of black cats, hurtling black trains, devouring fire and poisonous mushrooms. These signs of dismay haunt the movie."
Currently, the film has a 100 percent "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, based on eighteen reviews.
Ranked #23 in Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.
Awards
Wins- Chicago International Film FestivalChicago International Film FestivalThe Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America....
: Silver Hugo; 1973 - San Sebastián International Film FestivalSan Sebastián International Film FestivalThe San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
: Golden Seashell, Victor Erice; 1973. - Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain: CEC Award; Best Film; Best Actor, Fernando Fernán Gómez; Best Director, Víctor Erice; 1974.
- Fotogramas de Plata, Madrid, Spain: Best Spanish Movie Performer, Ana Torrent; 1974.
- Association of Latin Entertainment CriticsAssociation of Latin Entertainment CriticsThe Association of Latin Entertainment Critics is a nonprofit cultural organization founded on December 12, 1967. The organization has bestowed the LatinACE awards annually since May 25, 1969...
: Premios ACE, Cinema, Best Actress, Ana Torrent; Cinema, Best Director, Víctor Erice; 1977.
External links
- The Spirit of the Beehive essay at Criterion Collection by Paul Julian Smith