Adelaida García Morales and Víctor Erice
a superior film to Erice’s more famous/acclaimed The Spirit of the Beehive.
How is that possible?
How is that possible?
You prefer The Spirit of the Beehive, Robert?
I actually think that they are both excellent films, I just personally feel that El sur explores in greater depth the complex relationships between the various characters, which is very interesting for me.
…complex relationships between the various characters…
Most dramas do that, don’t they?
Beehive explores the formation of a self in terms of reality and imagination.
And again, in terms of cinema’s affect on memory it reassembles the fragments of an elusive reality.
I liked Quince,because it is about an artist with a specific technique which reminded me of working in the darkroom. But I wouldn’t say it was better because of my personal feelings.
Beehive explores the formation of a self in terms of reality and imagination … in terms of cinema’s affect on memory it reassembles the fragments of an elusive reality
Are you sure that El sur doesn’t do this in some way too? That the girl’s struggle to understand her mysterious father is not an exploration of the formation of a self in terms of reality and imagination – that is, the difference between how she imagines her father, and how he really is? And how we the viewers are able to interpret this? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your position here.
But I wouldn’t say it was better because of my personal feelings.
Personal feelings aside, what does it really matter if one film is “better” than another? I’m not necessarily denying the importance of descerning whether one film is “better” than another, but I’m interested in your opinion here.
Well, you made the claim that superior film to Erice’s more famous/acclaimed The Spirit of the Beehive.
Beeehive does it both within the characters and as it relates to cinema. So the film is layered beyond just characters. In terms of Ana, she is on the threshold of self-hood and that liminality is compelling.
“a superior film to Erice’s more famous/acclaimed The Spirit of the Beehive”
Wow, it must be phenomenal, then.
Beeehive does it both within the characters and as it relates to cinema. So the film is layered beyond just characters.
Okay, good point.
Yeah, I suppose I should of made it clearer that I personally prefer El sur over The Spirit of the Beehive… at any rate, I think that they are both outstanding 5-star films, and I hope that this throwaway comment (…a superior film…) doesn’t overshadow the rest of my OP – because I wasn’t intending for this thread to be about “which film is better” ;)
I found El Sur to be less striking than Beehive overall. It is a pretty damn good film, but until i see a good print of it, i’m going to hold off on judging it too harshly in comparison.
Spirit Of The Beehive is one of my favourites from the 70’s though, so it won’t be easy for me to agree that El Sur is better.
If anyone speaks Spanish and is a fan of El sur, a rough idea of what is discussed in this YouTube video would be great!!
Also, this Spanish video has some written text in Spanish, which when Google Translated into English (or Engrish, as you can see below) reveals some information on the production of the film, and on why it was not “completed”:
In an interview granted to ‘Spanish version’, Victor Erice has confessed how he imagined the movie Sur, who could not complete as wanted by budget problems, finishing the shoot several weeks ahead of schedule. Yet it is one of the great classics of Spanish cinema.
For its length, the interview can only see it in full here on the web.
“The South has never been divided in two films as mentioned,” says the director, ending an urban legend circulating for years.
“The work plan envisaged 81 days of filming and the film was interrupted by the production when it took just 48 days. I mean, there were still 33 days of shooting”
What we could not see in the film
"I agreed to continue the assembly of the South on the basis of an agreement signed with the producer, Elias Querejeta, where we both committed to continue working to complete the original project, said Erice. And as I made the commitment to this assembling what is now The South "
In the long interview, Erice continues to ensure that he did not want to go to Cannes with the film unfinished, but the Director of the Festival was moved by the film despite its opposition decided to release it. And also, interestingly, the critical and commercial success was decisive for Elias Querejeta resisted its completion.
And most importantly, Erice tells us, in great detail, we did not see in the film: the protagonist’s journey south y. .. do not miss this interview.
For so tomorrow you can understand much better the film to be screened in the program Spanish version, La 1 de TVE, at 22:30. And then an interesting conversation with the participation of its protagonist, Iciar Bollain (also director of the rain) that debuted in the film as an actress at 15, and the popular writer Antonio Gala.
A comprehensive and revealing look at one of the great classics of our movies that we can finally understand the full complexity.
As I mentioned in the OP, it’s up to the viewer’s interpretation as to whether or not the film is better or worse for not including the scenes after Agustín’s suicide (the conclusion of the film, but not of the novella) in which Estrella visits the south of Spain in order to learn more about her enigmatic father… it’s hard for me to say, but I think that the film probably benefits from the lack of further information on Agustín, and hence it benefits from the extra ambiguity/mystery inherent in his suicide; that is, aren’t all parents mysterious and ambiguous to some extent in the eyes of their children? Particularly, isn’t the mystery of what one’s parents’ lives were like before they had children an interesting one? And so to what extent would this “interest” factor – assuming that one has already taken an interest in the characters, and hence one actually cares about the fate of the story in which they populate – be a “good” thing for cinema/literature? In the case of El sur, perhaps the more ambiguous Agustín and his suicide is, the more the resultant interest and curiosity we as an audience may be able to invest into the inner workings of the film… at least, that seems to be the way for me personally, but I’m interested in hearing other people’s opinions on the matter.
BUMP!
Are there no Erice fans out there interested in discussing this film in more detail?
Another aspect of El sur which I admire (and which I haven’t mentioned yet in this thread) is the cinematography by José Luis Alcaine – though I don’t think I’ve seen any of his other films – which imo is a masterful example of lighting and colour, in which an old technique known as chiaroscuro is prominently displayed in various scenes, thus evoking the Dutch golden age of painting with its golden hues.
And then of course there’s the sublime marriage of Estrella’s melancholia with the Très lent movement of Maurice Ravel’s Quatuor à cordes.
However, I’m most interested in hearing opinions on the ambiguities inherent in the characterisations, and how they could have the potential to express the meaning of the film.
“in which an old technique known as chiaroscuro is prominently displayed in various scenes, thus evoking the Dutch golden age of painting with its golden hues.”
Sure, but i’d need to see a good print of the film before i can pass judgement.
hopefully Criterion or Artificial Eye or someone will release it in the not too distant future.
hopefully Criterion or Artificial Eye or someone will release it in the not too distant future
Yeah I second that, Joks; I’m surprised it hasn’t been done already. I actually recently bought a promo DVD of El sur on eBay from a guy in Greece, which is of good quality, and is much better quality than the web downloads currently available.
^^has it been officially released on dvd anywhere?
@Joks
Yeah, but unfortunately it has long been out of print. The promo DVD which I bought seems to be based upon this version.
^^Thx.
I’m sure i read that Janus owned the rights in the U.S, so hopefully a Criterion dvd/blu-ray will turn up sometime
I’d be interested in discussing this film with anyone… BUMP!
Here are some screenshots from the promo DVD which display, among other things, the chiaroscuro technique of the cinematography which I so admire (oddly, upon taking these, I noticed that the frame was slightly crooked):
lovely! i saw this film about a month ago. it has fantastic atmosphere. loved the character of her aunt. interesting about the differences in the novella. i liked the way it ends so mysteriously tho
Such a beautiful thread. I’ll translate that youtube video above as soon as I find the time.
@Ruby
The atmosphere is indeed fantastic! Evocative, melancholic, immersive, etc… and it’s not just the cinematography which delivers this atmosphere imo; it’s also inherent in the subtle expressions of the characters, and how these expressions are structured together over the course of the film in order to enigmatically unfold their fractured relationships not only with one another, but also with their surroundings in their large old rural Spanish house. And let’s not forget the subtle use of classical music, too!
I’m not sure that Milagros was the aunt of Agustín (she was his nanny, I think), but either way yes, I agree that she had a very likeable, warm and bubbly elderly character (which was wonderfully performed by the charming Rafaela Aparicio) which in my mind provided a nice and well-balanced contrast to the other more melancholic, distant and naive characterisations in the film.
And yes, I also like the mysterious ending; it leaves me thinking more and more about the inner lives of these beautiful characters.
@apursansar
A translation of that video would be superb! Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much information (in English) about this film out there, but if Criterion were to eventually release it then I’m sure that this would change.
By the way, this post on IMDb mentions that a Spanish Blu-Ray/DVD combo with English subs with this film and Spirit is on the way, which would indeed be incredible, but unfortunately he/she does not include a source.
ahh absolutely right! it wasn’t her aunt at all! but she really was the only one who gave estrella any information about her father’s mysterious past and even that was rather cryptic. i liked the star motif used throughout too. does it have a special significance besides being the girl’s name, estrella? and i remember many lovely dissolves, especially one where she’s riding her bicycle in the lane and time shifts from her girlhood to adolescence. thanks for all these beautiful screenshots, you’ve reminded me how much i loved the film xD
btw i borrowed a few of these stills for ulicain’s cinematography thread!
I also noticed a star motif occurring throughout the film, Ruby: Estrella’s name, Estrella’s ring (which she wears both as a little girl and as an adolescent), and the decorations of the café come to mind (perhaps I am overlooking some others too). As far as I can remember though, the star is not a motif in the novella (her name was Adriana), and so perhaps Erice was using the star as a symbol for something or other, but if so, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean! Very interesting to consider though; thanks for pointing it out.
I’m glad that you mentioned the dissolves, which I remember as turning slightly bright before fading to dark (i.e. leaving a brief sort of ghostly imprint of the brighter contrasts within the black); I was so tempted to take a few screenshots of them, but in the end I decided not to because I didn’t think they would look anywhere near as good as static images compared to the dynamic temporal shots in the film. I’d say that a dissolve can add a unique aesthetic to a film compared to a simple cut, etc, and when in good hands they can certainly add to the atmosphere of a film such as this one.
Feel free to use the screenshots however you like!
Here’s the first half of my video translation. I’ll translate the second half someday soon.
Erice begins to work on the script, and again Querejeta calls Ángel Fernández-Santos so that he may collaborate with the director. After three months of mutual work Fernández-Santos abandons the project, and Erice ends up filming on his own a script of almost 400 pages.
Elías Querejeta (producer): “Víctor developed a script that was really extensive according to my point of view, but a script that was heartfelt, lively and very interesting for me.”
“The South” begins to get filmed with Omero Antonutti and Icíar Bollaín in the main roles."
Icíar Bollaín: "I went to firm the contract with my father because I was a minor. My father had been told they would be making a film, he thought it would be some work by an amateur. Thus when firming the contract as ignorant as me he asked: “Who is going to be the director?” So they told him it was Víctor Erice and my father almost fell from his seat because he had seen “The Spirit of the Beehive”. And when we went back home he said to me: “Dear child, are you dumb? Do you know who’s Víctor Erice?” And I said: “Yes, it’s that man with the beard who was at the institute.” I was totally ignorant and about Elías I knew absolutely nothing."
The film was once again – like “The Spirit of the Beehive” – based on the mysteries of childhood. However the film encloses more question marks as there are demonstrated in its images. When about 170 pages of the script have been realized the film gets interrupted which provokes a great huddle.
Víctor Erice: “The shooting schedule included 81 filming days. And the film was interrupted by the production after 48 filming days. That means there were 33 filming days that would have been left.”
Elías Querejeta: “I felt obligated and responsible to make this decision knowing that in this case Víctor wouldn’t approve the decision. Or rather I was sure he wouldn’t approve it which in fact was the case.”
There were various hypotheses at the given hour which tried to determine why exactly Elías Querejeta interruped the shooting for “The South”.
Icíar Bollaín: “Today it’s like: The money in the north has been used up, let’s continue in the south. But he must have had some strong reasons, because it’s a tough decision to end a story like this.”
Carlos Saura: "I’ve read Víctor Erice’s original script because Bertrand Blier who had made a film with Elías in France had it. He gave it to me and said: “Look, what a script. And Erice practically couldn’t realize it.” It’s a beautiful script, but I’d say to realize this script for a film of four or five hours would have been a very complicated thing to do."
Elías Querejeta: “Throughout the filming I got worried that the structure would destabilize and if it went on it would have done the film a disservice.”
Gracia Querejeta: “Well, as it was told at that moment it appeared as if the producer interfered and didn’t let the director shhot a second part of his film. But I think the story wasn’t well told.”
Carlos Saura: "Elías either lacked the understanding or he simply didn’t have the money to finish the film . Or perhaps he didn’t intend to continue it. "
So they told him it was Víctor Erice and my father almost fell from his seat because he had seen “The Spirit of the Beehive”. And when we went back home he said to me: “Dear child, are you dumb? Do you know who’s Víctor Erice?”
Haha!
Interesting comments concerning the incompleteness of the film; it seems that some figures liked the film as it was, but others felt that it would have been a much better film had it been “completed”.
Thanks so much apursansar for translating the video for us non-Spanish speakers; I look forward to the second half :)
El sur is available to purchase on Blu-ray and DVD with English subtitles.
The set includes Blu-ray and DVD versions of both El sur and El espíritu de la colmena, and a small booklet in Spanish. Here are some screenshots of the El sur DVD (sorry but my laptop doesn’t read Blu-rays):
Well, I’ve just viewed the Vértice Cine version of El espíritu de la colmena (from the set I linked above), and unfortunately it seems to be contrast-boosted too much, and the golden hue is a very sickly yellow. Here are a couple of screenshot comparisons between the Vértice Cine version (top) and the Criterion version (bottom):
The Vértice Cine version of El sur also seems to be contrast-boosted a bit too much, but I didn’t notice any major differences between the hues of this version and the promo DVD version (see screenshots above). Hopefully Criterion will remaster El sur one day, but until then, the Vértice Cine version is clearly the best we have.
I just watched this film, and found it to be beautiful. I really would have liked to see the intended other half, but that’s only because I know about it.
The Spirit of the Beehive has been my all-time favorite film for quite a while, and yet I had never seen any of Erice’s other films. I am now smacking myself on the head for not seeking them out sooner.
While I don’t have much to say about this right now, I will say my favorite scene of the film was when she hid under the bed all day. That scene just completely captivated me, and it really captured something special.
Anyway, this film definitely deserves to be discussed much more. I can see many re-watches in the future.
Mischa
El sur is a novella written in 1981 by Adelaida García Morales, adapted for the cinema in 1983 by the Spanish auteur Víctor Erice.
Only the first 40 pages of the novella (out of 55) were adapted for the film. If you have not yet read the novella but are interested in doing so, then be warned that there are many spoilers ahead!
The protagonist of El sur (The South) is a young Spanish girl living in the north of Spain. In the novella she is named Adriana, and over the course of the book she ages from about 7 to 15 years old; in the film she is named Estrella, and she is similarly aged (perhaps a bit older than 7, however).
In the novella, an older Adriana relates her story in the form of a confessional letter written to her estranged dead father, Raphael, in which she addresses her readers as if we are he; in the film, Estrella is more of a character who is depicted in a series of events which explore her fractured relationship with her father, Agustín, with the occasional voice-over narration from her older self, as though she is looking back and reflecting upon her childhood. Thus, Adriana’s story in the novella reads more like a personal confession of her dysfunctional childhood written for private eyes only (her dead father), as though we the readers are somehow intruding upon Adriana’s privacy and personal torment; whereas Estrella’s story in the film views more like an open observation of her dysfunctional familiy, which is perhaps given to no-one in particular. I strongly feel that this distinction is actually a key concept in trying to understand and appreciate the inherent capabilites of – and limitations in – expressing a story both in literature and in cinema.
There is a strong difference in the tone of the characters’ personalities within the novella and the film; Adriana and her father are much darker than their cinematic counterparts. Literary Adriana’s loneliness and isolation is stressed in much greater detail: her father refuses to let her go to school or to have friends, which results in some disturbing events which are not depicted in the film – such as Adriana, at the age of around 7-10, venting her frustration at being teased by another girl after their first communion by physically harming her, and, in another instance, almost killing the same girl (who was visiting their house) in a fit of frustration and rage.
Estrella’s cinematic father (Agustín) is a distant, melancholic and enigmatic figure who manages to captivate his impressionable daughter’s imagination, but Adriana’s literary father (Raphael) – whilst remaining enigmatic – is downright cynical and cruel; Adriana confesses that Once you said to me while we were having lunch, ‘When you’re grown up, don’t marry or have children, if you want to do anything interesting with your life.’ And later you added, as an apparently banal comment, ‘Even if it’s only to have the freedom to die when you want to.‘ – such advice from a clearly suicidal father to his impressionable young daughter would naturally be confusing and psychologically damaging; later still, after being physically assaulted by Raphael after he found her out with a male friend, his distraught daughter confesses that I couldn’t understand your cruelty. It was the only time you ever hit me. I wasn’t expecting such violence. You seemed alien, and your blows didn’t even hurt. Adriana further confesses that her mother told me ‘He never loved me’; thus, Adriana gives the impression that her father Raphael was so deeply depressed and withdrawn into his own little world that he was rendered not able to properly care for his wife and daughter, let alone love them. It is up to interpretation to determine just how “selfish” a man he really was, but this essentially is the crux of Adriana’s “confessional letter”: she expresses her intense distress over her father’s neglect of her in the face of her natural desires and needs as a lonely child. Reading her “confessional letter”, one gets the impression that Adriana is utterly obsessed with her father; in one instance, she relates a dream of hers in which she felt a strong desire: to marry you; whilst I certainly would not mistake this as being an incestuous desire of Adriana’s, it is at any rate clear to me that she desperately wanted to be an important part of her mysterious father’s inner life, and yet he coldly would not let her in. She further confesses that Behind your back, a different life was taking root in me, and I realised I was better loved by people in the street than by those at home; this is also implied in the film, but perhaps with a touch more subtlety and ambiguity – the strength/weakness of this is open to interpretation.
The key event of the novella is slightly different to that in the film. In the novella, Rapahel’s mother dies in their hometown of Seville (the south), and after visiting there, Raphael is observed by his daughter as beginning his tragic downward spiral which would culminate in his suicide (occuring when Adriana was about 15 years old). It is implied that perhaps at that time Raphael met in Seville with his former lover from his youth, Gloria Valle, but this is not certain. At any rate, Raphael’s depression and his resultant suicide certainly stems in part from his regret of the failure of this relationship; a relationship which preceded Raphael’s move to the north of Spain, and thus which preceded the birth of his daughter, Adriana, and his marriage (to Adriana’s mother). The film tells this episode in a different manner: it is Agustín’s father who is at odds with his son, resulting in a family rift which would result in Agustín running away from home (the south) at an early age – and hence possibly running away from his former lover Irene Ríos (Gloria Valle in the novella) – which may serve as a possible explanation for Agustín’s resultant depressive and avoidant behaviour. Cinematic Estrella discovers Irene Ríos in much the same way that Literary Adriana discovers Gloria Valle (by way of written letters between the two), but the difference between the two lies in the way in which we the audience can interpret the Raphael/Agustín and Gloria/Irene relationship; that is, because their history is slightly different, Raphael/Agustín’s melancholia can thus be interpreted a touch differently.
‘Look,’ you said to me, ‘the worst suffering is that which has no specific reason. It comes from all sides and from nothing in particular. It’s as if it had no face.‘ This is about as clear an explanation that we get from Literary Raphael for explaining his depression to his daughter. Beyond this, the best information that we receive is from Adriana’s visit to Seville at the end of the novella, in which it is revealed that Raphael actually fathered a son with Gloria Valle before leaving them both for the north, and thus before fathering Adriana and marrying Adriana’s mother; according to one of Gloria’s letters to Raphael (in possession of Adriana), Raphael and Gloria seperated and reunited many times over during their ten-year relationship, which ultimately ended after Gloria “went away” for a year and returned only to find that Raphael had started a new family. This bit of information certainly reveals an added dimension to the suffering of Raphael, but again, it is up to the viewer’s interpretation as to whether or not the film is better or worse for not including these revealing scenes after Agustín’s suicide (which forms the climax of the film).
Anyways, I’m interested in getting some discussion happening here on MUBI about this film, because it is – in my humble opinion – a superior film to Erice’s more famous/acclaimed The Spirit of the Beehive.