In the original screenplay for "The Spirit of the Beehive," (1973) director Victor Enrice and his co-writer, Angel Fernando Santos, had structured the film as series of flashbacks.
The frame story involved a grown woman, Ana, returning the small Catalonian town in which she had grown up to attend to her father in his final illness.
All the scenes involving her as a little girl (played by the remarkable Ana Torrent) in 1940's Spain, post civil war, were to be shown in flashback, as the grown Ana wandered through her childhood home, the now abandoned school, and the town hall. It was in that town hall that Ana and her slightly older sister saw a traveling movie company's presentation of James Whale's 1931 film, "Frankenstein," a film which had no impact on the more mature Isabel, but changed her little sister's perception of the adult world and what it means to believe, to live, and to die.
Fortunately for the world of cinema, and for those of us who will get a chance to see this film presented in all its visual splendor and poetic subtlety at The Loft, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd., on September 19 and September 21, the filmmakers changed their mind after just a few days of shooting. They decided it would be much effective to film the story solely from the viewpoint of the seven-year-old Ana. That decision gave the world one of the two or three best performances ever by a child actor.
Like another of those great child actors, Mary Badham, Scout in "To Kill A Mockingbird," Ana Torrent is linked in the public mind in her country with the character she played as a child. In 1977, a year after Franco's death, Torrent belatedly received the Spanish equivalent of a Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
In 1973 Franco was still alive, and the repression of his regime is conveyed in metaphors and the attitudes and fears of characters of this film. It not so obvious to the point of equating Franco with the Frankenstein monster; in fact the ideas expressed in "Frankenstein" about intellectual freedom, and going beyond societal boundaries--bits of dialogue overheard by Ana's father at one point-- are counter to everything for which Franco's regime stood.
For Ana the iconic scene of the monster with the little girl who attempts to befriend him is transforming. Like that girl, Ana wants to believe that people are essentially good, and that kindness will be rewarded with friendship, even in a world where the adults around her, including her remote parents, seem like bees trapped in her father's experimental bee hive. As her mother writes in a letter, which may be to a lover lost to the civil war, "It's hard to be nostalgic now with all that has happened. It's as if we have forgotten how to feel."
Her older sister senses Ana's desire to believe, and torments Ana in that way children sometimes do, perhaps without real malice. Isabel's cruelty to the family cat is meant as revelation of her insensitivity. But Ana will not be deterred in her journey of self-affirmation. To give away how her path unfolds would rob the film of its magic. But Ana's final words in the film show she has arrived at her destination.
"The Spirit of the Beehive" will be shown at 1 p.m. on September 19, and at 7 p.m. on September 21, as part of The Loft's Essential Cinema Series. Admission is free, but a $5 donation is suggested.
