Erice's Songs: Nature as Music/Music as Nature

Whenever I grow a little tired of cathedrals, dead stones, and soulful landscapes, I have tried to search for the perpetually living elements where the minute does not freeze, elements that live a tremulous present. Among the infinite number that exist, I have followed two: songs and sweets.

Federico García Lorca, "On Lullabies"

There is more music in Víctor Erice's films than most people realize. We're familiar with the evocative scores by Luis de Pablo and by Pascal Gaigne, but, beyond those specific musical references, there are many other songs and natural sounds "orchestrated" as an integral part of the cinematic experience provided by this unique director. In particular, the sound of the ocean, absent in Erice's three feature-length films, appears with considerable frequency in his most recent work. While there is a great deal written about the visual imagery in Erice's films (especially with the thirty-plus anniversary of El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive, ES, 1973), far less attention has been paid to the songs, musical gestures, and natural sounds in his films.

Our focus here is on songs with words, or melodies that imply songs with lyrics. This is not to negate the importance of purely instrumental music in setting the tone of a particular Erice film, but rather to shift the focus slightly. This essay (which developed over several years, and with considerable correspondence between the United States and Spain) offers an analysis of Erice's oeuvre through a rarely explored dimension. Thinking about music and songs as pieces in time, we have considered these elements to be as important as other aspects of the films. We have made every attempt to examine all the songs that play pivotal roles, or that propel the narrative from the background. To explore the songs, musical gestures, and natural sounds in Erice's films is to investigate levels of significance that help us realize how much is taking place underneath and around the haunting narratives and images. In other words, it is to rediscover "melodías medio olvidades" (half-forgotten melodies).¹

Figure 1.

Víctor Erice

For those who judge a filmmaker by the quality, not the quantity, of his or her work, Víctor Erice stands at the pinnacle of what can be called "poetic cinema." Erice's work includes three full-length feature films: El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), El sur (ES, 1982), and El sol del membrillo/ Dream of Light (aka The Quince Tree Sun, ES, 1992). As film historian and critic Miguel Marías perceptively noted in his essay "Víctor Erice's Reasonable Doubts":

Curiously, the decade that more or less separates each of the three feature-length films that Erice has directed to date transforms each one of them into something very much like a "first film"; what's more, this cadence makes Erice an eternal "beginner," a sort of perpetual "amateur." Far from acquiring a "trade," it seems as if he keeps on doing things for the first time—a traveling shot, a close-up, a panoramic view, an ellipsis, and besides he does it as if each time the doubts he was raising were deeper, and each decision demanded more reflection, more reasons.²

In addition to the three feature-length films, there is also an extensive (published) scenario titled La promesa de Shanghai (Areté 2001, available only in Spanish). Then Erice filmed one segment of the omnibus film Ten Minutes Older, titled Alumbramiento/Lifeline (ES, 2002). Even more recently, he completed a short film, La morte rouge (ES, 2006), commissioned by the Erice-Kiarostami Correspondencia exhibition (Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Melbourne, Australia), and a series of videocartas (video letters) exchanged between the Spanish and Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (b. 1940) from April 2005 to May 2007.

Born in Carranza (Vizcaya) in 1940, Víctor Erice has spent much of his adult life in Madrid. He entered the...