351 The Spirit of the Beehive

[Cinesimilitude]

You could just send it to the first person who posts their address here; someone with multi-region capabilities who is not planning to buy the criterion edition and is willing to cover cost of shipping.

(PS. Holy sh!t, college might be paying off... can anyone tell me if that semi-colon use is grammatically correct?)

[TheGodfather]

Mine got shipped yesterday from dvdpacific, can`t wait to get it

[jorencain]

You could just send it to the first person who posts their address here; someone with multi-region capabilities who is not planning to buy the criterion edition and is willing to cover cost of shipping.

(PS. Holy sh!t, college might be paying off... can anyone tell me if that semi-colon use is grammatically correct?)

NO!!!! F for the semester!

(No, I don't know, really. That's how I would use it. Check out the semi-colon forum for the rules)

[atcolomb]

Spirit of the Beehive is DVD of the week at Digitally Obsessed and DVD Journal. Now, what should I do with my Optimum disc if I get this one?

I also have the Optimun disc too but i will keep both. Besides the Optimum disc is nice looking copy of the film AND it does have the trailer to the film which is not on the Criterion!

[Ishmael]

You could just send it to the first person who posts their address here; someone with multi-region capabilities who is not planning to buy the criterion edition and is willing to cover cost of shipping.

(PS. Holy sh!t, college might be paying off... can anyone tell me if that semi-colon use is grammatically correct?)

Your use of the semicolon would be alright if the clause after it wasn't a fragment.

[tryavna]

Your use of the semicolon would be alright if the clause after it wasn't a fragment.

Probably a dash would be more appropriate.

[JabbaTheSlut]

Got the disc(s) yesterday. The movie has aged well (saw it 10 years ago), it´s a masterpiece. And, again, beautiful work from Criterion. The transfer is excellent and the extras (or the supplements, as they like to call them at CC) are fine, the Erice interview in particular. I hope someone will soon release El Sur and Dream of Light on DVD.

[Steven H]

I hope someone will soon release El Sur and Dream of Light on DVD.

Dream of Light (or The Quince Tree Sun) is, or was, available in Spain from Rosebud Films (here's the dvdbeaver review), and despite a number of minor transfer/authoring issues, was an unbelievable delight. With that fantastic set of extras on the second disc, and the rarity and quality of the film itself I would easily rank it as one of handful of DVDs that I would be hard-pressed under any circumstance to let go of (maybe if someone put a gun to my head?)

I looked around google for a while but didn't find anything. It's probably out of print. Keeping an eye on eBay would be your best bet. El Sur is available in Spain without subs.

[JabbaTheSlut]

Thanks very much for the tip, Steven H!

I googled a bit too and actually found the Dream of Light DVD available here.

For The Hardcore Ericeists, Fnac.es also has on sale an episode film, with a segment directed by Erice, called Los desafios (By the way, has anybody seen it? There were some strange inserts from this film in the bonus disc of "The Spirit" that caught my interest).

[Michael]

Over the past couple of nights, I made through the Spirit of the Beehive set. A better treatment of this film is impossible to imagine. I was stunned by one of the extras The Footprints of a Spirit.. a documentary exploring not only the making of the film but also the village where the film took place. The village is nearly a ghost town today. Its school had shut down because in the end, it had only one child. There is a lot more to discover in this very fascinating documentary which also has the lovely Ana Torrent walking as our guide throughout the village of today. Interview with director Victor Erice reveals what a humble, sincere and brilliant person he really is.

The Spirit of the Beehive is very personal to me. I first saw it at a local museum when I was in my early teens and since then, I watch it every October.

[HerrSchreck]

I've owned this for about 10 days now and already seen it 5 times all the way thru-- I just can't fucking believe the magic of this thing. How he managed to do it-- how did he discover the technical means to do it..?? To recover the magic of childhood, peeling away all of the additions to our cognitive functions, all the mechanisms & reflexes of adult awareness as we evolve out of childhood, to thereby allow one to experience those 90 minutes as a child again? It's a fucking unbelievable recipe there-- it has that warm-soaked feel of childhood memories, the way the fabric of those sweet golden memories feel, including the naiive childlike fears, the worship of mommy & daddy... as well as the giggles, laughing at mommy & daddy at times (when allied with bro & sis) as the goofiest people in the world. But the recipe of sounds, light, the sun, the earth, I really don't see how this guy did it-- did he see it all in his head beforehand i e If I strip away all devices of clear narrative, purify the dialog until there's almost nothing, use XYZ means of shooting, I will have positively duplicated the universal fabric of Childhood Cognitive Function?

Very similar to Dreyer & Bresson & Tarkovsky in ways but at the same time so utterly original via the overload of emotion generated by these minimalist means of quiet narrative.

Though I do agree with the writer (in the doc) that the spell is broken by Erice's choosing to shoot the Karloff-imitation straight on, rather than be a little subtler in the chosen angles.

Beautiful set, and overall job by CC. Nice stuff from them lately. The year-end is wrapping up with them, from my perspective, back in fine form!

[Michael]

Though I do agree with the writer (in the doc) that the spell is broken by Erice's choosing to shoot the Karloff-imitation straight on, rather than be a little subtler in the chosen angles.

But Erice emphasizes that this Karloff thing needs to happen and this happens to Ana, only Ana and no one else. How she progressively processes the "phantom" starting with the school's mannequin named Don Jose, then the escaped prisoner and then ultimately the Frankenstein monster. If the monster put such a powerful impact on the girl, then the image of the monster slowly appearing more and more vividly in her eyes makes sense to me. Why the need for subtlety? It has to be complete once in order for Ana to move on to the "age of reason". I haven't seen Whale's Frankenstein in decades but I wonder if Erice used the same shot by shot as Whale's version of the scene when the girl faces the monster by the river.

The year is about to end. The Spirit of the Beehive is my favorite Criterion release next to Fists in the Pocket. The Amarcord reissue is spectacular though.

[nick]

I've actually wanted to comment on this film for the last month as I was able to see a 35mm projection about 5 weeks ago. To be honest though, HerrSchreck summed up pretty much what I wanted to say in a far more eloquent manner than I would be able to. I went into the film without any previous knowledge of what to expect and I was a bit taken at first. It wasn't until I got home and tried to explain the experience to my wife, when I realized that the film seemed to be refusing me enough information to analyze it from an adult perspective. The scenes that especially come to mind are those where we witness the adults. So much information is withheld from us that I was immediately frustrated by only being able to speculate as to what was going on with them. As I thought back I realized I felt like a child attempting to understand an adult world but only being able to grasp the emotions that I was witnessing. It was a unique experience and I can't wait to watch it again. The DVD has been patiently waiting in line over the past week.

[Gigi M.]

I haven't seen Whale's Frankenstein in decades but I wonder if Erice used the same shot by shot as Whale's version of the scene when the girl faces the monster by the river.

They are very similar, not shot by shot, but in feeling. I can only speak for myself, and as Sherck and Nick already said, this is true mastepiece of cinema. A very enduring film.

[Steven H]

But the recipe of sounds, light, the sun, the earth, I really don't see how this guy did it-- did he see it all in his head beforehand i e If I strip away all devices of clear narrative, purify the dialog until there's almost nothing, use XYZ means of shooting, I will have positively duplicated the universal fabric of Childhood Cognitive Function?

I loved the Japanese interview with Erice on the second disc, as it kind of emphasized a few things for me like a: Ana is the key to the film for the director, and b: Isabelle is an equally important counterpoint. Watching the film again and trying to see it through the eyes of the director, playing these siblings off of eachother in a natural, yet beautifully and cinematically choreographed, way, was a revelation. Surely a pure example of childhood, but there's a sad existential underbelly to this film, especially in light of it being set against the Franco rise to power and spanish civil war. Though, this might be a misguided sea to navigate...

I had really only seen the film before, many times of course, as a timeless reflection on childhood, pointedly set during the Spanish civil war. I assumed it was casting innocence against the travesty of war, but that's such a minor goal compared to what I'm taking from it this time around. It's complex exposure of adult reasoning skills and the child's inability to differenciate between fiction and reality, can leave you speechless. In that way I believe it's a rare work of art that comments on human socialization profoundly, and if we can call any work in any medium "timeless", I'd love to say The Spirit of the Beehive must be.

Unlike Dreyer and Bresson, I see Erice as more agnostic or athiest, sociology and psychology over divinity and faith. Anyone agree?

[Michael]

I now feel so stupid. Earlier I was wondering if Erice used the same shot by shot as Whale's version of the scene when the girl faced the monster by the river. The Spirit of the Beehive actually shows that scene earlier in the film when the village folks attended the screening of Frankenstein. No, Erice didn't use the same shot by shot but more importantly,both versions, Erice's and Whale's, do share the same spirit.

[Wittsdream]

found the Dream of Light DVD available

The film is indeed available at Fnac.es for a mere 17+ Euros. The problem is that they are charging 33 Euros to ship it to the U.S..

I love Erice, and I admire the film quite a bit, but I am not paying over $40 U.S. dollars for shipping. That's an outrage!!!

Anyone else have other ideas on how to obtain this film for less than $70 U.S.?

Thanks for any input.

[John Cope]

I agree with you and would also love an answer to this question. The Fnac shipping price is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever had the misfortune to be exposed to. When I first found out about this myself I assumed my math was just bad.

[Subbuteo]

Xploited Cinema did stock it at one time, have you tried asking them to obtain it for you? Worth a go!

[Tommaso]

The film is indeed available at Fnac.es for a mere 17+ Euros. The problem is that they are charging 33 Euros to ship it to the U.S..

Correct me if I understood something wrong, and I have never ordered from them, but their site says:

América del Norte Desde 12,38 €

That is airmail shipping up to 500 g. Perhaps they changed something around?

[HerrSchreck]

Though I do agree with the writer (in the doc) that the spell is broken by Erice's choosing to shoot the Karloff-imitation straight on, rather than be a little subtler in the chosen angles.

But Erice emphasizes that this Karloff thing needs to happen and this happens to Ana, only Ana and no one else. How she progressively processes the "phantom" starting with the school's mannequin named Don Jose, then the escaped prisoner and then ultimately the Frankenstein monster. If the monster put such a powerful impact on the girl, then the image of the monster slowly appearing more and more vividly in her eyes makes sense to me. Why the need for subtlety? It has to be complete once in order for Ana to move on to the "age of reason". I haven't seen Whale's Frankenstein in decades but I wonder if Erice used the same shot by shot as Whale's version of the scene when the girl faces the monster by the river..

No one's questioning the need for this to happen at all-- that's not the issue. The fact that it happens to Ana and no one else is not the issue either.

The issue that I'm raising is one which, by accident, you seem to acknowledge... that the image is entirely her own-- not ours, the audience. It is her phantom-- or encounter, as she may be seeing a genuine lost/homeless individual/etc and merely seeing him as the monster. This is the beauty of the film in that we don't know that she's hallucinating, don't know whether or not someone is really there... we know very little about anything in the film-- thus the glorious uh subtlety in the film. What Erice's screenwriter and I am talking about is the fact that by instinct, some members of the audience like me who have had FRANKENSTEIN burned into their heads by seeing it all the way thru over their lives literally around 100-plus times... that an audience member is involountarily going to take a moment to reflexively note the differences between the actor playing the monster and the monster himself.

Why the need for subtlety? For god's sake man were you watching the film?

It has to be complete once in order for Ana to move on to the "age of reason".

It has to be "complete"? First of all what is "complete", and why does "it" "have" to be complete? Almost nothing is complete (if even anything is) in this film. So much of it works so well because the reasons that the members of this family are haunted-- indeed Ana's haunted obsession itself-- are sketched in in only the lightest possible terms of vaguery. So why does our witnessing of what Ana sees-- when she "sees" the monster-- have to be from her precise P.O.V, with features well lit, and square on? And how does our seeing the actor playing the monster fully square on, thereby seeing that this is not the Karloff-monster she saw in the film, how does this in any way help Ana "move on to the age of reason"? The idea the writer raised is not that we see that she is "seeing" the monster, but that we see him from a camera angle whereby we instinctually start comparing him to karloff, which breaks the spell. To me it's the single amateur aspect of Erice's mise en scene in the film.

I think the difference between us is the fact that you are not as familiar with Whale's film, and Karloff, as I and other older viewers who experience what Fernandez Santos does during that scene. As to your question Erice vaugely simulates the shots of the monster and the girl in really only one basic two shot, of the monster falling to his knees beside the girl. Otherwise he is led by the hand by little maria in the original (doesnt happen in SPIRIT), and there are no scenes dragging out the monster's reaching for her with a trembling reaction shot, and there is no real duplicate of the sympathetic shot under discussion here, where we see the monster looking so sadly as a wounded lost soul at Ana the way he does in Erice's film.

And again, so much more is at play here than Ana's advancement to "the age of reason". Where do we get some sense that Ana is moving past this phantom to a more reasonable fact based world? In fact the last shot of the film is of the young girl arising when the rest of the family is asleep, almost "promising" her commitment to her friendship or visitation. This could spell her doom in the future, as a person preoccupied with late night visions on deserted streets, or being suckered by vagrant lost souls who she views as sympathetic characters... or it may be a wonderful thing that's happening to Ana, whereby she is awakening to the plight of all lost souls, almost a hypothetical union of souls on into the future, a commitment or prayer there at the window where her mind is laying the groundwork for a permanent empathy, an indentification with all dislocated people, that her vision in the woods was not actually FRANKENSTEIN but some cast-out, condemned vagrant, or sociological "outcast" (i e the process begun with the "freedom fighter" in the abandoned farmhouse), and that the process symbolized by her experience with watching the film ("why did they kill him?"), as it progresses, identifies Ana as a girl apart, sensitive though haunted, keyed in at an early age to humanist ideas that the average individual is oblivious to... that of seeing past the facade, the veneer of ugliness or crime or social degenration, of not being afraid of the unsightly.

The beauty is that none of this may be at play here-- it's not like Ana is the daughter of conservative parents. They were on the losing side of the war, therefore were liberal at very least; Ana could be interpreted in fact as a warning to the dangers of falling for the seduction of the darker sides of life and those who reside there, and that the girl is doomed to a lifetime of nocturnal wanderings seeking out a warmth in lost souls that will forever see her winding up sleeping out of doors, cold, hungry, devoid of companionship, chasing a phantom image of man which simply doesn't exist.

You see what I'm getting at. With a film like this, as regards plot, saying that anything "has to" be anything (i e "complete") is simply naiive and nudges off the endless possibilities of art. As you yourself, if a creative person, start to create, you'll never cease to be amazed by folks coming back to you, overwhelmed by something you've created, explaining to you why they love "the part where you XYZ" and how it meant so much to them because they "know that you meant EFG"... which was the furthest thing from your mind when you created the thing they're talking about.

[Michael]

Yes I'm seeing what you're getting at. Your interpretation of all this is so deeply, overhwelmingly thoughtful and beautiful that I'm not even sure what to say now. I really saw the monster with his crooked hands approaching Ana in its complete form representing Ana's obsession taking over completely. It's hard to know whether Ana has entered the age of reason or not by the end. I feel that she has somewhat as she turns to us in the moonglow but because of the powerful impact that Whale's Frankenstein has on her will remain with her, at least in her spirit, for the rest of her life.

[HerrSchreck]

Hey, you're entitled to see it the way you originally saw it, or see in tomorrow in a way neither of us touched on here, and be 100% correct... if I've broadened your appreciation of the film that's excellent; my goal was really just to defend my feelings vs your suggestion that I was wrong because something "had" to be seen a certain way.

[Michael]

HerrSchreck, what is your take on Isabel? She's quite a fascinating girl. With such an eerie aura about her that blends in with the mood of the film perfectly. I also love the mother - a gorgeous woman with the most painfully vacant eyes. The mother playing the piano as Ana flipping through a photo album hit me so hard that I have no idea why. I tried hard to find the reason and none came to me...that's the beauty of the film.

[HerrSchreck]

For all the talk about her being a "mean kid" etc, I actually saw Isabel to be a rather normal kid with nothing unusual about her at all. The pranking, cruel powertripping when away from parents & messing with her younger sibling's head.. it's all pretty normal and in fact tame in Isabel's case compared to the usual elaborate pranks, tiptoeing up behind scaring the shit out of, the mindfucking, all the torments that are typical of intersibling relationships at that age & the years immediately following (where it can get even more vicious and even downright awful). Anybody who grew up with brothers & sisters, unless they grew up under Ned "Christ" Flanders, knows exactly what I mean.