Blancanieves

Blancanieves is a silent film directed by Pablo Berger. This film, unlike other silent films we have watched, has an amazing cinematographic motion picture. The movie was released in 2012 and is directed in black and white and silent. This is unusual for the time this movie was directed and released but the actions from each character portray the story very well. The story is based around the daughter (Carmen) of a famous matador. One aspect that kept my attention throughout the movie was it was broken into three parts. The first part was about Carmen’s father and mother. Her father the famous matador who was blessed with unbelievable skills in his trait and just before his accident he speaks out to his wife about the child they are expecting. As soon as his tragic accident occurs it shocks his wife and she goes into labor. In labor she passes away giving birth to their daughter but the father is distressed and turns away from his own daughter. His nurse soon realizes who he is and marries him because of the money.

This leads into the second part which is the growth of Carmen. Once her grandmother passes away she is forced to live with her father, whom she’s never met, and her stepmother. The stepmother has an awful hatred towards her and doesn’t allow her to meet her father. Being a child, she disobeys her step mother and meets with her father who is thrilled to see her and gets flashbacks about his late wife. This leads to the third part which Carmen is following her father’s she becomes a successful matador before she was killed. Although the film was silent, Pablo does a great job in adding subtitles to get the main point across. This gives more meaning to the silent movie because the audience can assume what the characters are talking about but with the added subtitles it reiterates the main points shown acted.

One major comparison in the story line that Pablo uses is Snow White. Carmen is Snow White and treated how Snow White was treated in her story. Pablo does take a different take from the fairytale but the overall theme is the same. The step-mother is the evil witch which poisons the apple at the very end to kill Carmen. Carmen’s matador group is related to the seven dwarves, which at the end of this movie find the evil step mother and kill her by trapping her with a bull. Overall Pablo does a great job in showing the art of bull fighting and also tying that together to Snow White.