Although the story draws on the Brothers Grimm and the legend of Snow White, it is anything but a children's movie. It is a full-bodied silent film of the sort that might have been made by the greatest directors of the 1920s, if such details as the kinky sadomasochism of this film's evil stepmother could have been slipped past the censors.
The delightful "The Artist," which slipped away with last year's Academy Award for best picture, cheated a little by having tongue-in-cheek fun with its silence, and even allowing a few words to sneak in. "Blancanieves" exploits the silent medium for its strengths, including the fact that it can so easily deal with fantasy. This is as exciting, in many of the same ways, as the greatest traditional silent masterpieces by Dreyer, Pabst or Murnau. It's a Spanish film, but of course silent films speak an international language.
