The film's cinematographer, Luís Cuadrado, was going blind during filming. According to the DVD supplement "Footprints of a Spirit" in the Criterion Collection's presentation of "The Spirit of the Beehive", when the film was awarded first prize at the prestigious San Sebastian Film Festival, there were boos of derision and some people stomped their feet in protest. The film's producer said many in the audience offered him their condolences after the first screening in late 1973. Years later, when the film was re-released in the United States in early 2007, A.O. Scott, film critic for "The New York Times," reviewed it and lauded the direction of the drama, writing: "The story that emerges from [Erice's] lovely, lovingly considered images is at once lucid and enigmatic, poised between adult longing and childlike eagerness, sorrowful knowledge and startled innocence." Film critic Dan Callahan praised the film's cinematography, story, direction and acting. He wrote, "Every magic hour, light-drenched image in Victor Erice's "The Spirit of the Beehive" is filled with mysterious dread...There's something voluptuous about the cinematography, and this suits the sense of emerging sexuality in the girls, especially in the scene where Isabel speculatively paints her lips with blood from her own finger...[and] Torrent, with her severe, beautiful little face, provides an eerily unflappable presence to center the film. The one time she smiles, it's like a small miracle, a glimpse of grace amid the uneasiness of black cats, hurtling black trains, devouring fire and poisonous mushrooms. These signs of dismay haunt the movie." Tom Dawson of the BBC wrote of how the film handled using its lead child actors to portray children’s point of view, praising the young actresses Ana Torrent and Isabel Tellería. “Expressively played by its two young leads, it's a work which memorably captures a child's perspective on the mysteries of everyday life.” A Variety review at the time of the film’s release applauds the film’s actors, Ana Torrent and Fernando Fernan Gomez in particular, and points to the simplicity of the scenes in the film as a source of its charm. In 2007, Kim Newman of Empire praised Ana Torrent for her performance, saying she “carries the film with a remarkable, honest performance — perhaps the best work ever done by a child actor.”