Frankenstein's freakish powers

Victor Erice's quietly magnificent film, made in 1973, casts back to the beginning of Franco's dictatorship and the misleadingly peaceful rural Spain of the 1940s.

Two little girls, barely comprehending, watch James Whale's Frankenstein, and their childish interpretations of the film have a profound effect on lives already shadowed by their parents' responses to the recent civil war.

Oblique and - by modern standards - slow, Erice's film has a muted beauty and a rapt attention to its small main characters that draws the viewer in. Minimal extras, though: an interview with the notoriously unprolific director would have been welcome.