The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) on Netflix
Castile, 1940. Ana and Isabel see Frankenstein when a film show comes to the village. Isabel says the monster is not dead but a spirit nearby. Ana goes looking for him.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.7/1023,006 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Spain, 1940. In an isolated village on the Castilian plain, in the years just after the Civil War, Ana lives in a manor house with her older sister Isabel, her father Fernando, who keeps bees, and her mother Teresa, who writes letters to a soldier she met during the war. A traveling film show brings Frankenstein to the village. The screening leaves six-year-old Ana fixed on the monster and the little girl he plays with. Isabel, who likes to test her little sister's trust, says the monster did not die, that films are not real, and that he is a spirit Ana can reach. Ana believes the spirit lives in a deserted sheepfold, and she returns there alone to look for him.
Cast
- Isabel Telleríaas Isabel
- Ketty de la Cámaraas Milagros, la criada
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Franco-era censors were alarmed by the film's suggestions about the authoritarian government but still let it be released in Spain, because it had succeeded abroad and they assumed most of the public would have no interest in such an "arty" picture.
- Víctor Erice changed the script so that the four main characters share the first names of the actors playing them, because seven-year-old Ana Torrent was confused by the on- and off-screen naming.
- When the film took first prize at the San Sebastián Film Festival there were boos of derision and some people stomped their feet in protest; after the first screening in late 1973, many in the audience offered the producer their condolences.
- An earlier version of the story was set in the 1970s and had an aged Ana returning to her village to reunite with her dying father; Erice changed it, saying it would "tidy up the drama, emphasizing soap opera over childish magic."
- As of 2022, The Spirit of the Beehive is the only film by a Spanish or Latin American director to appear on Sight and Sound's list of the 100 greatest films of all time.
- The film became one of the most influential in Spanish history and inspired future filmmakers, shaping Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, Issa López's Tigers Are Not Afraid and Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower.
