Criterion.com article on El Espiritu

This is quite an interesting article about El Espiritu de la Colmena.

• The artists who worked on the film have been haunted by its success - Erice has only made two features since.
• The 'Francoist aesthetic' - gaping plot holes and mysteriously motivated characters. Due to censorship. This can be seen clearly in El Espritu.
• The film has been seen as essentially Spanish. Ana Torrent's appearance has seen her compared to a Goya portrait. 'A village on the Castillian plain', the opening line, has been compared to Don Quiote's 'In a place in La Mancha'.
• Early versions of the script are overtly political. eg. the opening sequence once contained shots of abandoned cannons and army boots. Instead, the final version of the film uses coded references to the war - Teresa's letter is written to a refugee camp for exiled Spaniards in France, a photo is seen of Ana's father with Republican icon Miguel de Unamuno.
• Isolation is even within the family, as they are never all seen within one frame.
• Realism compared to contemporary film - the children record their own dialogue on location, whereas usually they would be dubbed by screechy women.