MovieChat Forums > El espíritu de la colmena (1975) Discussion > What time did Fernando go home?

What time did Fernando go home?

posted 10 years ago by chuck-526
3 replies | jump to latest

In the beginning we see Fernando "finish" with his bees and go home.

Almost everything suggests this happened at noon. His pocket watch says approximately 12:00. He appears to be looking for an excuse to be "done" with his bees. The men he meets in the street appear to be doing daytime tasks. Nobody else was home-he wasn't expected. The servant Milagros berates him for keeping such an unusual schedule. And it's consistent with his character being an absent-minded and somewhat unwilling beekeeper.

But the announcement of the movie by the lady with the small trumpet, just after the truck arrived, clearly said the movie would be shown at 5:00. In that rural Spain in summertime five o'clock would still have been late afternoon, consistent with no men of working age in the movie audience and with there being plenty of daylight. It would also mesh with school being over for the day and the girls free to attend.

So what time was it really, and why does it appear to be a mismatch?

[–] cosmic_surveyor 10 years ago

You're giving heavy importance to the pocket watch as it relates to timekeeping. Maybe it is decorative, a symbol of his comparative wealth. Maybe it didn't keep time well, and due to the civil war, it could not be repaired by a skilled craftsman.

In that light, he may seem absent-minded and be operating on an unusual schedule.

I've only seen it once, on TCM. In terms of timekeeping, did the watch play a role with the soldier in the barn? In that scene, by finding the watch amongst the pockets of the jacket Ana brought him, I think all he did was admired the case's craftsmanship. The same thing happened while it was in the Police Chief's possession. Time was not read from that watch.

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[–] chuck-526 10 years ago

Your memory matches mine for two of the cases where the watch shows up (the soldier in the barn, the police chief).

But you missed a couple more. Very near the beginning of the film, the first time we see Fernando, moving combs from one beehive to another, he clearly consults the time on the watch just before leaving his bees and going home. The music was apparently incidental that time, playing only because the watch was opened to look at the time of day.

If the watch ran somewhat erratically, as you quite reasonably suggest, it seems to me it might have been off by an hour or so, but not five hours. If it didn't do anything even sorta close to keeping time, Fernando would have long since realized that consulting it was worse than useless and given up on using it to tell time, making it hard for me to understand what he was doing in that scene.

(The other time the watch appeared -irrelevant to my original query- was at Fernando's dinner table after he got it back from the police chief. He opened it to start the music on purpose, then looked around the table to see who would react. By Ana's reaction he figured out it was her that had some involmement with the coat and the dead soldier.)

My interpretation is the most likely reason for him acting like an "absent-minded professor" is that he was on a trajectory to be a real professor-type before he got banished to that backwater and forced into dramatic underemployed.

[–] qweentana 10 years ago

In my opinion Fernando got home in the afternoon.
He asks Milagros if there's something to "merendar". In Spain "merendar" is to have an afternoon snack.
Besides the station clock says 6:20 when Teresa gets there.

The pocket watch seems to have some kind of symbolic meaning, it also appears in the last drawing of the opening credits, along with the director name.
I don't know why it says 12, it could be a goof.