July 26, 2025 at Metrograph
In 1962 Víctor Erice covered the Cannes Film Festival for a magazine called Nuestro Cine, and over the next 7 years wrote at least a dozen articles for the Marxist journal modeled after Guido Aristarco’s Italian counterpart Cinema Nuovo. He wrote articles about Charlie Chaplin, Mizoguchi, and Henry King, but one director, Nicholas Ray, is the only filmmaker given a book length study (co-written with Jos Oliver in 1986). Erice wrote, ‘Ray lived to film and filmed to stay alive.’ The same could be said about Erice.
Related texts
From Velázquez’s Mirror to Dream of Light: A Conversation About Film by Shiguéhiko Hasumi
Like in a Mirror by Víctor Erice
Program 1
Wind Across the Everglades
Dir. Nicholas Ray
1958. 92 min. 35mm.
In English.
“I remember in 1964 we saw George Cukor and confided to him that Wind Across the Everglades was one of the most beautiful American films. He broke out in a peal of laughter where all the contempt he had for this little film could be read. We were very wounded, but we have never changed our minds.” —Serge Daney
Program 2
Dream of Light
Dir. Víctor Erice
1992. 133 min. 35mm.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
“More disappointing to [Erice], though, was the impossibility of communicating the true meaning of the Spanish title of the film El sol del membrillo in other languages. A literal translation would be ‘the sunlight falling on the quince tree,’ but to every Spaniard, the phrase also bears a slightly inauspicious nuance. Erice explained that the sunlight referred to is specifically that of late September, when the quince begins to ripen. In Spain, many people still believe that children should not have much exposure to the sunlight at that time of the year… I further inquired if the ‘ripening of the quince’ referred also to the inevitable stages of overripeness, decay, and death, and Erice replied that ‘the sunlight falling on the quince tree’ connotes death, as well as some ineffable quality that beckons one to madness. Dream of Light is therefore an autumn film.” —Shiguéhiko Hasumi
Special thanks to Víctor Erice, Shiguéhiko Hasumi, Adrian Martin, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Inge de Leeuw, Edo Choi, Anri Vartanov, and Alexander Fee.