The Spirit of the Beehive
(El Espíritu de la Colmena)
Víctor Erice / Spain / 1973 / 98 min
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In 1940s Spain, two sisters become obsessed with finding Frankenstein’s monster. In a small Castilian village in the early 40s, in the wake of the devastating Civil War, Ana and her sister, having seen a mobile projection of Frankenstein, becomes obsessed with locating the legendary Monster. A complex allegory and bewitching portrait of life under Franco’s regime, the film captured the effects of hidden traumas resulting in the willed avoidance of painful past experience, and the resonance of the absences that the Civil War had caused in every family. Erice once said there were several movies within a movie. A film that is, at heart, a love song to a earlier cinema: that kind of cinema shown at neighborhood theaters where villagers discovered the great American titles of the time. But more than that: a lyrical inquiry into the discovery of the world precisely through film.