The Spirit of the Beehive

''The Spirit of the Beehive'' (Spanish: ''El espíritu de la colmena'') is a 1973 Spanish drama film directed by Víctor Erice. The film was Erice's debut and is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema. The film focuses on a young girl named Ana and her fascination with the 1931 American horror film ''Frankenstein'' and also explores her family life and schooling.

Many have noted the symbolism present throughout the film, as an artistic choice, and a way Erice avoided the censors. Despite censors in Spain, which was under the Franco regime at the time of its making and release, the film still manages to symbolically portray Spanish life under Franco's rule. And while censors were alarmed by some of the film's suggestive content about the authoritarian regime, they allowed it to be released in Spain, based on its success abroad, and the assumption that most of the public would have no real interest in seeing "a slow-paced, thinly-plotted and 'arty' picture."

The film has been called a "bewitching portrait of a child's haunted inner life". Erice's work on the film would eventually influence the work of Guillermo del Toro on his own films ''The Devil's Backbone'' and ''Pan's Labyrinth'', particularly the recurring idea of children believing in and acting on beliefs about imaginary worlds around this period of Spain's history.

Plot

Six-year-old Ana is a shy girl who lives in the manor house in an isolated Spanish village on the Castilian plateau with her parents Fernando and Teresa and her elder sister, Isabel. The year is 1940, and the civil war has just ended with the Francoist victory over the Republican forces. 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. Ana's closest companion is Isabel, who loves her but cannot resist playing on her little sister's gullibility.

A mobile cinema brings ''Frankenstein'' to the village and the two sisters go to see it. The film makes a deep impression on Ana, in particular, 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 did not kill the girl and is not 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.

Ana's fascination with the story increases when Isabel takes her to a desolate sheepfold, which she claims is the monster's house. Ana returns alone several times to look for him and eventually discovers a wounded republican soldier hiding in the sheepfold. Instead of running away, she feeds him and even brings him her father's coat and watch. One night the Francoist police come and 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. When Ana next goes to visit the soldier, she finds him gone, with blood stains still on the ground. Her father confronts her, and she runs away.

Ana's family and the other villagers search for her all night, mirroring a scene from Frankenstein. While she kneels next to a lake, she sees Frankenstein's monster approaching from the forest and kneeling beside her. The next day, they find Ana physically unharmed. The doctor assures her mother that she will gradually recover from her unspecified "trauma", but Ana instead withdraws from her family, preferring to stand alone by the window and silently call to the spirit, just as Isabel told her to.

Cast

Historical context

Francisco Franco came to power in Spain in 1939, after a bloody civil war that overthrew a 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 Francoist State was not as severe as it had been at the beginning; however, it was still not possible to be openly critical of the Francoist State. Artists in all media in Spain had already managed to slip material critical of Francoist Spain 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.

Symbolism

The film is rife with symbolism and the disintegration of the family's emotional life can be seen as symbolic of the emotional disintegration of the Spanish nation during the civil war.

The beehive itself has symbolism not only for the audience, but also for one of the characters: Fernando the father. And the beehive symbolizes the same thing for both parties: “the inhumanity of fascist Spain.”

The barren empty landscapes around the sheepfold have been seen as representing Spain's isolation during the beginning years of the Francoist State.

In the film, Fernando describes in writing his revulsion at the mindless activity of the beehive. This is possibly an allusion to human society under Francoism: 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 is drenched in a honey-colored light.

The symbolism of this film does not just cover political topics, it also covers aspects of childhood, such as fears, anxieties, and imagination.

Ana represents the innocent young generation of Spain around 1940, while her sister Isabel's deceitful advice symbolizes the 'Nationals' (the Nationalist faction soldiers led by Franco, and their supporters), accused of being obsessed with money and power.

Even the film's setting in history has symbolism of its own. 1940 was a year that Erice and other Spaniards of his generation sees as the start of Franco's rule over Spain.

Production

The film's producer, Elías Querejeta, worried that the film would not reach completion.

In a prior version of the story, originally set in the period of the 1970s, a grown Ana's father is terminally ill, and she returns to her village to reunite with him. Thinking that this version would “tidy up the drama, emphasizing soap opera over childish magic,” Erice changed the story.

The location used was the village of Hoyuelos, Segovia, Castilla y León, Spain.

The four main characters each have a first name identical to that of the actor playing them. This is because Ana, at her young age of seven 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.

Víctor 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, Luís Cuadrado, was going blind during filming.

Critical reception

According to the DVD supplement "Footprints of a Spirit" in the Criterion Collection's presentation of ''The Spirit of the Beehive'', when the film was awarded first prize at the prestigious San Sebastian Film Festival, there were boos of derision and some people stomped their feet in protest. The film's producer said many in the audience offered him their condolences after the first screening in late 1973.

Years later, when the film was re-released in the United States in early 2007, A. O. Scott, film critic for ''The New York Times,'' lauded the direction of the drama: "The story that emerges from rice'slovely, 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... ndTorrent, 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."

Tom Dawson of the BBC
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