Josh Bell
Disney doesn’t own Snow White. The corporate behemoth may have inducted the character into its princess pantheon, but the original fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm remains in the public domain, and there are endless ways to interpret it — rather than simply copying and pasting a classic animated movie into CGI-drenched live action. While Disney’s new Snow White remake opens in theaters this week, there’s a much more creative live-action version of the story out there from the filmmaker behind a different beloved animated movie.
Before he made the Oscar-nominated Robot Dreams, Spanish director Pablo Berger offered his own interpretation of the Snow White story with 2012’s Blancanieves. Like Robot Dreams, Blancanieves is a dialogue-free movie that relies on the expressiveness of its characters to convey emotion, albeit drawn from an entirely separate cinematic tradition. It’s a black and white silent movie modeled after the films of its 1920s setting, although Berger doesn’t limit himself solely to retro filmmaking techniques.
At the time, Blancanieves was overshadowed by another silent-film pastiche, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, but unlike that Best Picture winner, it’s not just a hermetically sealed tribute to the era it’s emulating. Instead, Berger uses the language of silent film to tap into the tragedy and longing of the Grimm story, while transposing it to a new time and place. It’s easy to recognize the iconic elements of the story, including the evil stepmother, the poisoned apple, and the seven dwarves, but Berger’s whimsical approach makes them feel fresh while retaining their timeless quality.
Blancanieves begins in the bullfighting arena of Seville, rather than a castle surrounded by woodland, and the king is now a champion bullfighter, Antonio Villalta (Daniel Giménez Cacho). His world is shattered in a single day, when he’s paralyzed from the neck down after being gored by a bull, and his wife Carmen de Triana (Inma Cuesta) dies while giving birth to their daughter. The traumatized Antonio shuns his daughter, and gold-digging nurse Encarna (Maribel Verdú) swoops in to marry Antonio and keep him locked away in a sprawling estate.
Verdú’s performance as the gloriously devious Encarna fits perfectly into the tradition of mesmerizing silent-movie villainy, and she’s more entertaining to watch than the humble and sweet Carmen (played as a child by Sofia Oria and as an adult by Macarena Garcia). With her glimmering eyes, fabulous outfits, and kinky sex games with her chauffeur, Encarna is a full-on demented diva, and Berger and Verdú make her enjoyably reprehensible.
Carmen may be less flamboyant, but Oria and Garcia give her a kind, sympathetic nature, and she finds her own fierceness when she eventually follows in the footsteps of her bullfighter father. After Encarna attempts to have Carmen killed, she’s rescued by a circus troupe of bullfighting dwarves, who embrace her as part of their act. Suffering from amnesia, she is rechristened Blancanieves and rises to stardom, setting up a final showdown with the jealous Encarna.
All of this is largely predictable to anyone familiar with any previous incarnation of the oft-told story, but there’s still an element of surprise and delight to seeing how Berger approaches each aspect. While Disney has been mired in controversy over its depiction of the dwarves, Berger casts little-people actors in a context that makes sense for the time period, and he treats the characters with respect and care. There’s no Prince Charming in this version — Carmen’s true love is instead the handsome dwarf Rafita (Sergio Dorado), who’s never anything less than a viable suitor.
The silent-film style allows Berger to tell the primal story in a relatively broad manner, without taking away from its subtler shades. Berger deftly employs classic cinematic techniques like dissolves and close-ups to impart valuable information without dialogue, along with strategically deployed title cards. He doesn’t hold back from camera moves that would have been difficult or even impossible during the silent era, and Blancanieves never feels like a phony recreation or a clumsy spoof. The Academy ratio frame is frayed at the edges, and there are a handful of shots with what looks like a hair caught in the film gate, but overall Berger eschews the kind of distracting fakery that mars so many modern efforts at evoking the feel of vintage film.
Berger’s comparative restraint may be one reason why Blancanieves never got the same attention as The Artist in the U.S. (although it was highly awarded in its native country) and why it’s rarely included among the most notable Snow White adaptations. Far more people will see Disney’s film this week, but after witnessing that garish spectacle, they would do well to follow up with a take on the story that’s elegant, affecting, and made with genuine human artistry.
“Blancanieves” is streaming for free on Tubi and Kanopy.
