The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena)

What could a child know of the Spanish Civil War? What could they know about the POUM, the  International Brigade, the Friends of Durruti, and the Communist International? Not the specifics of course. But children must have heard the sounds. They must have seen the soldiers. Maybe our hypothetical child felt a current in the air - something indescribable - when Franco announced his victory.

Victor Erice's masterpiece almost didn't make it out of Spain. The film was completed two years before Franco died and had to pass through various censors. Despite the depiction of an anti-fascist soldier (supposedly the first sympathetic depiction of the Francoist opposition since the civil war), The Spirit of the Beehive was released to the world unscathed. According to Erice, who was given access to notes written by the censors, the authorities found the film slow and boring and doubted its ability to draw an audience. Such are the contingencies of history. Today, The Spirit of the Beehive is considered one of the greatest films of Spanish cinema.