The director of The Spirit of the Beehive, Victor Erice, sports a resume of theatrical feature films he has directed so robust that it makes Stanley Kubrick look prodigious by comparison. Over the last 35 years of his career, Kubrick directed just seven feature films. That is still more than twice the output of Erice’s entire career as of 2021. The upshot being that there simply is not enough material out there to identity something so strongly worded as “the Erice style.” This is not to suggest, however, that his directorial influence does not permeate through every frame of The Spirit of the Beehive.
From beginning to end, The Spirit of the Beehive is a veritable panoply of directorial touches. Everything from the design and lighting of the family’s house so that it resembles the interior of a beehive to the Bergmanesque composition of wide shots overwhelmed by negative space to induce subconscious feelings of dread all trace back to a keen directorial eye. It is these foundational rules of filmmaking that Erice’s influence is most obviously seen, but it is elsewhere that his is influence is most significant. For it is in something that the audience cannot really fully see that it can nevertheless ironically most deeply appreciate his work behind the camera.
Everything that is magnificent about The Spirit the Beehive—which is to say everything that one remembers about it—is dependent upon just one thing: the performances of the two young actresses assaying the two main roles. And within this significance is the greater significance of the performance of Ana Torrent as the young sister, Ana. Without one of the truly great child performances in the history of cinema, it becomes very difficult to imagine The Spirit of Beehive enjoying the status it enjoys today. That is not to suggest that it is a one-trick pony, but rather that the character of Ana is so central to everything else that makes the film great that things would begin to very quickly be subjugated to what is missing were there a lackluster performance struggling to hold everything together at the center.
Erice’s directorial influence almost unquestionably had to begin with the recognition that young Ana Torrent’s eyes are two of the most special anatomical features ever put on screen. Within those two oversized dark eyes can read a number of emotions. Considering that Torrent went on to successfully transition into successful actress as an adult, it is easy enough to imagine that this was a two-way street to a certain degree, but almost certainly the bulk of her performance was drawn out of her by the director. Something great working behind those eyes, obviously, because Torrent was not limited to being a child actress. It is one of the dirty little secrets of filmmaking that every single great child performance owes an enormous debt to the director. Those children who are particularly talented enough to make the transition to adult roles are generally those who do not require the most “directing” but even so, they all require direction more than adult actors. That is just the nature of the beast.
And the beast in this case is Eric photographing, framing, blocking, posing, and whatever else he did to wring such an extraordinary performance from such a young girl making her first movie. Were Torrent’s performance alone worthy of special attention, one might wonder that Erice’s lack of a long resume had something to do with his talent. But beyond Torrent’s performance is a movie in which every single shot is a work of art. Nevertheless, all that surrounding beauty would be nothing if the audience wasn’t right there with the character of Ana right from the start, understanding her fascination with the Creature, her irritation with her older sister, her alienation with her parents and her connection with the revolutionary soldier. It is through Ana’s luminous eyes that Erice forces us to view the events of the film and it is because he makes it so easy to crawl behind those eyes that his influence is most deeply developed.
