The Scrivener: The Spirit of the Beehive – Part One
…Much of the story is conveyed by the face and through the eyes of the young girl, Ana, played by the wide-eyed 7-year-old Ana Torrent.
Conversation is sparse; silence pervades.
There are broad landscapes but they are largely flat and featureless.
There is an escapee in an old barn…
Brian Barratt writes alluringly about the 1973 Spanish film, The Spirit of the Beehive.
This is the first in a series of three articles.
To read more of Brian’s entertaining and profound words please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/the_scrivener/
And do visit his Web site The Brain Rummager www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
Escape
The 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) has been called astonishing, remarkable and influential. Such a film requires viewing again. To put it into context let's have a quick look at a few notable aspects of four other 20th century cinema classics.
— In the captivating films about childhood, released in about 1957, and based on Marcel Pagnol's autobiography, La Gloire to Mon Père (My Father's Glory) and Le Château de Ma Mère (My Mother's Castle), much of the story is told without dialogue. The camera concentrates on the children's faces and also lingers on the glorious landscapes of Provence.
— Whistle down the Wind, released in 1961 and starring the young Hayley Mills, tells the story of children who discover a stranger in an old barn. They do not realise that he is actually an escaped convict. Through a misunderstanding of something he says, they believe he is Jesus.
— Ingmar Bergman's remarkable autobiographical film Fanny and Alexander appeared in 1983. It is full of symbolism and magic, the magic of childhood. One of its motifs is of the boy Alexander looking through or walking through open doors which lead in succession from one room to another, as though travelling symbolically through his own experience.
Similar ideas and motifs are used in The Spirit of the Beehive. Much of the story is conveyed by the face and through the eyes of the young girl, Ana, played by the wide-eyed 7-year-old Ana Torrent.
Conversation is sparse; silence pervades.
There are broad landscapes but they are largely flat and featureless.
There is an escapee in an old barn. He is not a convict but a soldier, possibly an unwilling conscript, deserting the conflict at the close of the Spanish Civil War.
Several times, we see through a series of open doors leading from one room to another in the large but almost empty family house in the village.
There are children's faces, wide landscapes, childish misunderstanding about a stranger hiding in a barn, and sequences of open doors seen in perspective. This film, however, is totally different from the others in a very powerful way. It is a beautifully photographed story about childhood but it is also about war.
The sleeve note of the DVD declares that it is "An audacious critique of the disastrous legacy of the Spanish Civil War". Strong, direct, decisive words. A film reviewer for The New York Sun expressed a different viewpoint: "The provincial setting looks timeless to our eyes (and through a child's), but it is indeed set in a 1940 Spain fresh from civil war. This provides a haunting context for [the] village's isolation and the family's disillusionment."
Moving further from the idea of a political setting, another reviewer echoes in his/her blog the reaction when the film was re-released in 2007, to the effect that, "[It] ought not to be viewed as anything deeper than what it is: a most exceptional vision of the inner life of a child just learning about the darker complexities of life".
To appreciate the film, we need to know something about the Spanish Civil War. It was a long, chaotic and bloody conflict, involving Republicans, Fascists, Nationalists, rebels, Communists, socialists, anarchists, Trotskyists, and others. In the far-ranging conflict, towns such as Guernica were wiped out.
"Over one million spent time in prison or labour camps. In addition to the 400,000 killed in the war, there were at least a further 100,000 executions between 1939 and 1943." (Encarta.)
With this in mind, we can understand why the people, the adults, in The Spirit of the Beehive are cautious, silent and frightened. The pervasive atmosphere of adult silence is the backdrop against which the innocent children have to live their lonely lives. It is, perhaps, a barrier which they have to pierce. While the grown-ups seek to deal with, escape from or erase their memories, the children are left to create their own escape. In this way, it is an exploration of a child's imagination.
To be continued.
References
The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973, DVD, Optimum Releasing.
http://www.nysun.com/arts/depth-of-a-childs-gaze/26582/
http://antagonie.blogspot.com/2008/10/tspdt-211-spirit-of-beehive.html
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