The Spanish Earth

Supported by prominent American literary figures like Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos Joris Ivens' "The Spanish Earth" is an interesting glimpse at Spain during one of its most turbulent eras. Narrated by Orson Welles (and later by Hemingway) the documentary shows rural and urban Spanish life in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. With striking scenes of the bare and wide land the film highlights people working and interacting and the trials and tragedies they had to go through all vividly showing a nation in turmoil as they try to get by in tumultuous times. Slow-going and lacking the pizazz that films of this kind should have the importance of this historical artifact nonetheless overrides whatever shortcomings the movie has. A visual time travel to one of the most momentuous and tragic periods in world history "The Spanish Earth" is priceless as it is important.

The movie makes no conventional attempt to situate viewers at the outset. Instead we're plunged immediately into a series of images loosely organized around the theme of hard Spanish earth. However, the pastoral scenes soon give way to images of fighting men. But in the absence of explanation, viewers can't be sure if the soldiers are Republican or Falange (fascist). It's only after about 15-minutes, we find out these are people supporting the republic. Maybe Ivens or Hemingway is making a subtle point by withholding information, but the absence could be confusing to contemporary viewers.

The movie itself has some compelling images; however, I doubt that most go beyond generic war imagery of that time. One does, nonetheless, get a sense of the impact on the civilian population in the areas surrounding Madrid. In no sense is the film a survey of that bloody civil war as a whole. Instead, it's a narrow slice from the loyalist republican pov. But neither is the movie simply Stalinist agitprop, (the Soviets supported the elected government; Hitler and Mussolini the Falangist rebels; while the US and England remained neutral). Rather, a strong subtextual theme appears to liken support for the republic to bringing water to the dry Spanish earth, a not unreasonable pov.

It's also worth noting the anti-fascist side quickly became a cause-célèbre among artists and intellectuals disgusted by the US and England's refusal to aid a fellow democratic government. Thus the movie has a number of illustrious names attached to it. It's likely because of these names that I expected more than the overall result delivers. Nonetheless, the brief documentary remains a snapshot worth watching, even for those unfamiliar with the historical period.

The Spanish Civil War remains as one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts involving a major country, and it's impossible to sum up its many nuances. You'll get one view of the conflict here with incredible footage of war and glimpses of rural Spanish life.

This, however, isn't a documentary as much as it is straight Soviet-style propaganda. The style of the film, from the poor farmers bettering themselves with a homemade concrete irrigation system to the election of soldiers to hear impassioned political pep talks from movement leaders, s straight from the Stalnist manual of Lifestyles of the Glorious Peoples. This isn't meant to Red-bait any of the participants -- they truly believed in a "free" Spain, and fascist-backed Francisco Franco's regime wasn't the answer, either -- but the reality was far different and is only now coming to light after 70 years.

The Spanish Civil War was also very much a fascist/Soviet proxy war, and the Soviet Union had a not-so-hidden hand in its direction. Look carefully at the fighting sequences, and you'll see very atypical people in different-style uniforms guiding artillery and directing troops.

As a historical insight -- despite what now appears to be a ham-fisted approach in propaganda -- the film is priceless. And many thanks for TCM and its ever-expanding programming efforts in broadcasting the film in July 2007; hopefully, we'll always have somebody unwilling to slice, dice and crop something and still call it a classic, ala AMC.

This famous "on the fly" barely-feature-length documentary about the Spanish Civil War was endorsed by the likes of writers Ernest Hemingway (who provides the dry narration), John Dos Passos, Lilian Hellman and actor Orson Welles (whose name also appears on the poster but whose vocal contributions were eventually dropped). Starting out with the images of farmers 'testing' for water sources on their lands, it soon settles down to denoting how the conflict was affecting a besieged Madrid: from the breadlines offering insufficient stamped supplies to the clandestine Loyalist meetings to the destruction left in the wake of the Fascist (read Nazis and Italians) aerial bombings.

Although the Spanish Civil War would be the subject of several Hollywood movies – most prestigiously via Hemingway's own epic FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (1943) – and cast an indelible shadow over the careers of future native film-makers (especially Carlos Saura), we know precious little about the conflict itself and, tellingly, we do not learn much here either; indeed, Ivens is merely content to observe – panicking villagers mourning their dead and loss of property – and report – we are told that the bearded Loyalist officer seen here organizing and inspecting his troops will die in the next assault! Perhaps the most striking moment occurs when a bike-riding mailman enters a building and has to literally skip over the corpses of victims still blocking the foyer entrance! Interestingly, the U.S. funded production was selected by the "National Board of Review" as one of the year's Top 10 foreign films!

Probably more shocking at the time, this dated essay on war documents the good peasants and peoples army vs. the bad professional army and foreign troops. One of the earlier times that a camera was permitted to document the horrors of war, the production attempts to tell the moral message of the righteousness of the Republican cause -- but ultimately the film denounces war itself. Despite its noble crew, the documentary is slow-moving and suffers from what appears to be a voice-over of a silent film. A must see for those who have to see something about the Spanish Civil War or who have to hear Hemingway's voice, but this is not an evening's entertainment. The Why We Fight series done by the US Army during World War II is far superior. The horrors of war were captured for the present generation on their TV screens during the Viet Nam War.