Silencio Magnifico

I've never been a big fan of silence films. Nor have I ever been a big fan of Spanish films. However, this week I watched Blancanieves. I loved it. In fact, if this wasn't a silent film I might not have liked it as much as I did. Why? The cinematography is forced to reveal the plot. And the cinematography is beautifully done in this film. One of my favorite film ideas is taking a traditional story or fairy tale and putting a twist on it. Especially, when the plot of the original story comes together very slowly and there are connections in the plot everywhere. In this case, director Pablo Berger puts a Spanish, matador twist on the classic tale of Snow White, or in Spanish, Blancanieves.

Connections. This film is all about connections and finding them in every single part of the story. For example, and another one of my favorites of the movie, meeting Carmen's parents and then Carmen herself or as a young child, Carmencita. We'll start with her father, the famous matador. We see him getting dressed to go into the ring. The entire seen is shot with extreme close ups. Really extreme. To the detail of each thread and sequin.

The cinematography is huge when introducing these three characters, especially given this is a silent film. First, it's important to understand the background of Snow White. She was born into a royal family. Not exactly the case in this film. However, she still comes from important people, so it is important that the cinematography captures the elegancy of Carmen and her parents.

Anyway, we have the famous matador being dressed in elegant and sparkling clothing. The clothes of a traditional matador. Then we have just a magnificent piece of cinematography when he opens up his locket to look at his wife. The camera zooms into her face on the locket and the shot fades from a close up of the locket right into the actual close up of Carmen's mother, who is sitting in the stands above the ring her husband is about to enter. We see medium close ups of her, a beautiful woman who is also dressed elegantly. So far, both parents have been shown in close up shots to reveal their elegance, beauty and importance. After the ordeal with the bull and the birth, both the parents (whom yet are not parents but are about to be) are in the hospital, both with lockets of each other. So we get sweet and touchy emotions in there. As the dad dies, we see the grandmother of Carmen (La Abuela) standing over the dying father. The shot fades to black. When the shot fades back in we see the grandmother, dressing a young kid, Carmen, in a (what else?) elegant white dress.

So meeting each of these characters sums of the beautiful cinematography of this film and the amazing effects it brings. Each piece of the plot and each scene connects to another part of the film or the original story of Snow White. Might even watch this again to pick out all the connections in this film.