"Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo."
-- Mary Pickford
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| Self portrait 5-15-14 |
"The silent film has a lot of meanings.
The first part of the film is comic.
It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films.
But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion."
-- Pedro Almodovar
I have this yellow Post It on my desk that says, simply, "Blancanieves -- watch this movie."
My friend Jill wrote it and stuck it there months ago.
When Netflix finally got their shit together and offered the film, I downloaded it, and then it sat there in my queue, unwatched, for weeks and weeks. Yesterday, when nobody else was home and I had an afternoon all to myself, I finally watched it.
It's a silent film, black and white with music, set in 1920s Seville, and is the story of a girl named Carmen, who happens to be the daughter of the once great matador Antonia Villalta. The film is essentially a retelling of the Snow White tale, complete with evil stepmother, poison apple, and a merry band of bullfighting dwarfs who find the girl nearly drowned -- and amnesic -- by a riverside after a failed attempt on her life engineered by the stepmother. The dwarfs name her Blancanieves, or "Snow White", after the famed fairy tale, and she joins their bullfighting act. And the girl's got skillz, which she learned from her father, even though she doesn't really remember it.
This movie was thoroughly imaginative and captivating and charming but also haunting and tragic. And there's this rooster that is pretty fucking terrific.
Don't be dissuaded by the fact that this film is silent, and black and white, and foreign. You won't miss the talking, I promise. Plus, all of the inter-titles are in English, so it's OK if you don't know Spanish.
I don't want to say a whole lot more about the film, because I don't want to spoil it for you.
All I have to say is that it's such a good thing and I am so glad Jill told me about it.
Oh, and this --
"Blancanieves -- watch this movie."
