‘Beehive’: An Exquisite Enigma

Victor Erice’s rarely revived 1974 “The Spirit of the Beehive,” one of the finest Spanish films, screens tonight at 7 p.m. in Room 101 at USC’s Taper Hall of the Humanities as part of the International Film Club’s “Mystery and Magic” series. The film is a masterful reverie, an exquisite enigma in which everyday life is juxtaposed against a sensitive child’s acutely responsive imagination. Set in a remote countryside village in the bleak aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, it stars the remarkable Ana Torrent as an impressionable child who, after watching “Frankenstein,” believes that the monster still lives. This rigorous, reticent film, with its myriad philosophical, political and psychological implications, explores the power of the imagination as a way of contemplating the essential mystery of life and death.

Information: (213) 743-2666.