‘The Artist” won the Best Picture Oscar, and the half-silent “Tabu” earned multiple raves. But Pablo Berger’s “Blancanieves” is the purest, boldest re-imagining of silent cinema yet.
Set in southern Spain in the 1920s, this “Snow White” adaptation strips away the supernatural, yet preserves the enchantment. Carmen is the daughter of a bullfighter who’s been paralyzed in the ring. A chain of calamities leaves the young woman (a soulful Macarena García) at the mercy of stepmother Encarna (Maribel Verdú of “Y Tu Mamá También,” who steals the show).
Baring wolfishly crooked teeth in smiles that seem to glisten with blood, Verdú creates the wickedest clotheshorse since the glory days of Joan Crawford. Carmen runs away to become a bullfighter like her father, and shacks up with six (yes, six) dwarves — but no diva like Encarna gives up easily.
Berger shoots in the boxy screen ratio of silent days, uses intertitles sparingly and flourishes an emphatic score. The black-and-white cinematography, by Kiko de la Rica, is so ravishing it borders on decadent. But the director isn’t after mere homage; his imagination roams over all of movie history.
The camera sweeps over the gates of Encarna’s mansion like Xanadu in “Citizen Kane”; a hellish banquet evokes “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” Classic cinema was always a kind of modern folklore; Berger makes that connection with splendid intelligence.