Blancanieves

Directed by Pablo Berger

(PG-13)

***

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Is it really time for more “Snow White” revisionism? said Stephen Whitty in theNewark, N.J., Star-Ledger. In this case, yes—because Spain’s contribution to the recent string of big-screen adaptations “creates something new out of something old,” turning the classic tale into a black-and-white silent film while resetting the story in 1920s Seville. The reworked narrative “hums with volatile passions,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. This film’s Snow White, renamed Carmen, is the daughter of an injured bullfighter, and her stepmother a former nurse who is “transformed before our eyes into a murderous gold digger” by a “delectably wicked” Maribel Verdú (Y Tu Mamá También). But while this movie proves seductive in its use of music and dramatic imagery, it “never quite achieves the uncanny, haunting intensity of the silent films it

so lovingly mimics.” Don’t dismiss it as a stunt, though, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Like 2011’s silent Oscar winner The Artist, “this remarkable film” reminds us that wordless cinema can be “spectacular” in its own right.