Blocus

In the spring of 1936 in Castelmare, the peasants Marco (Henry Fonda) and Luis (Leo Carrillo) help the aristocratic Russian Norma (Madeleine Carroll) that had a car accident while driving to the house of her father Basil (Vladimir Sokoloff) and Marco falls in love with Norma.

Sooner the Spanish Civil War begins and Marco leads a group of peasants to defend Castelmare and he is assigned lieutenant of the rebels' army. Meanwhile, Basil and Norma are forced to spy for Andre Gallinet (John Halliday). Marco suspects of Basil and follows him to his room. When Basil reacts, Marco kills him in a shooting.

Meanwhile, Castelmare is under siege and without supplies, and Norma escapes from Marco. But she is blackmailed by Gallibet and forced to return to Castelmare with information about the ship that is bringing supplies for the population.

"Blockade" is a shallow and corny melodrama during the Spanish Civil War (17 July 1936 to 01 April 1939). The dull romance between Marco and Norma has no chemistry and the author uses a historical event that is happening in 1938 in a neutral position and no references. The final speech of Henry Fonda's character is one of the awfullest conclusions that I have ever seen in a classic. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Bloqueio" ("Blockade")

Marco is a simple Spanish farmer who is forced to stand up and be counted when he takes up arms to protect his country during the civil war. When his heroics and bravery sees him promoted up the ranks, Marco finds things complicated when he starts to fall in love with a woman who's father turns out to be a Russian spy. The couple try to deal with their feelings while they find themselves on opposite sides of the war.

Boasting the tagline 'the most important film of 1938' and having been awarded Oscars at the time of its release, I decided to watch this film and see what the fuss was about. What I found was a film that is too self-consciously cautious to be great fun, too worthy to be involving and ends up being rather dull and uninteresting. The basic plot is set around the Spanish civil war but it appears to have been careful about coming down on either side of the argument and therefore is so balanced that it almost cancels out any content that may have been challenging or informative. This leaves a story about personalities and the central romance, which is a problem because the film doesn't deal with these very well either. The romance tries to be bleak and supposedly doomed but it just can't get the tone right and it never really gets anywhere near as emotive as it needed to be – certainly this is no Casablanca.

With the script problems and rather drab direction, the film only occasionally gets close to being really impacting and involving and it was only the moments where the horrors of the conflict are allowed to get above political neutrality that the film comes to life – but these are too infrequent. The cast are set adrift and do the best they can to squeeze emotion and drama out of the script but their efforts just seem out of place against a rather flat backdrop. Fonda is always watchable even if his 'good honest man' is a rather dull character and, for that reason, hard to get behind; certainly modern audiences may find his unquestioning patriotism and simple morals hard to swallow. Carroll is better than the film deserves, her performance is very good and it is just a shame that the rest of the film doesn't come up to her level of work. Support is OK but the script doesn't fill the film that well and most of the cast are given little to do.

Overall this may well have been the 'most important film of 1938' but it doesn't do a great deal today. The film doesn't inform and isn't interesting as it carefully treads the complexities of the conflict – and Fonda's final to-camera rant about peace is too little, too late and just comes across as being rather pat. The romance could have saved it but this too is fluffed despite the best efforts of Carroll, but Fonda, despite being worth a look, plays it all to simplistically in line with the material.

To paraphrase the late great Father Coughlin's jibe at the Roosevelt government's provision of "relief that failed to relieve", this inept film on the Spanish Civil War provided propaganda that failed to propagandize. That, at least to this viewer, is the only thought that lingered after suffering through almost 90 minutes of Blockade. I say this with a great deal of reluctance because I have always considered myself a great fan of both the principals of this film, Madeleine Carroll and Henry Fonda, but, alas, not even these two cinematic greats could salvage this bummer. In my quest to apportion blame I suppose the the script writer, a certain John Henry Lawson, is as good a place as any to start. The clunky lines he puts in the mouth of Fonda, a peasant hero of the so-called "republican" cause--particularly his closing monologue--are grounds for confinement in the most austere of labor camps courtesy of his obvious favorite, Comrade Joseph Stalin. I was especially struck by the tepidity of the romantic interludes with the beautiful Carroll, suggesting that a proletarian partisan like Mr. Lawson has little feeling for the more sublime side of human emotions. All of this I could excuse if Blockade offered anything approaching effective political propaganda if that was what it offered; but, at the risk of being tedious, that was precisely where it failed the most.

For political propaganda that both entertains and persuades, let me suggest Casablanca. For political propaganda that offers only a few glimpses of the radiant Madeleine Carroll and nothing more, I recommend Blockade. That, unfortunately, is not enough to salvage this less than scintillating 1930s leftist pap.

John Howard Lawson joined the CPUSA in 1934 and announced that he would try to "present the Communist position" in his scripts. On the face of it, he didn't get far in "Blockade", a notoriously timid Spanish Civil War pic released while it was still being fought. Publicity promised that "the story does not attempt to favour any cause"; even the uniforms were ambiguous.

The factions are referred to only as "Them" (invaders) and "Us" (invaded). The casus belli is no more than Their attempt to purloin Our land, a valley near Granada. What ensues is personalised, studio-bound melodrama. Heroic amateur soldier Henry Fonda stiffens his fellow peasants' backs to resist the grab. He woos blonde White Russian adventuress Madeleine Carroll and finally demands foreign intervention in a Chaplinesque harangue to camera: "Where's the conscience of the world?"

It all savours of Hays Office intervention and the anxiety of Lawson's "progressive" producer, Walter Wanger, not to provoke the US public by charging them for a liberal sermon. But "Blockade" may be subtler agitprop than it seems.

By 1938 anybody who read a paper or watched "The March of Time" would infer that Fonda stands for the Republic fending off General Franco's Nazi- and Fascist-backed Nationalists-- not the other way round. And Lawson's emphasis on small farmers guarding their ancestral acreage is just what Stalin ordered. In reality the country round Granada was a hotbed of anarchist schemes for collectivising agriculture, but the Communist line was that the Republic's left-front government, including democratic socialists and liberals, must be sustained till the rebel generals were routed. Only then could land reform be considered; reform under the aegis of a Communist-dominated regime subservient to Moscow, which would nationalise the land, not parcel it out to dubious anarchic types.

Moreover, Lawson must have relished making Carroll's character an exiled daughter of Russia with a crooked anti-Red father, who sees the light in Fonda's arms.

We laugh at movies such as this and "Last Train from Madrid" for their superficial, sentimental view of a burning issue. But what right has today's supposedly more liberated Hollwood to laugh? Where were Vietnam films during the conflict, apart from John Wayne's "Green Berets"? How many Gulf War or Enduring Freedom stories have we seen? How many portrayals of radical Islam, pro or anti? Hollywood is more gutlessly evasive than ever during our dangerous times. Well, export markets provide more of its profit margin than 60 years ago...

¨Blockade¨ is a passable film unmistakeably set against the background of Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) directed by William Dieterle , the original title of this film was "The River is Blue" and the first director was Lewis Milestone . The title was changed to "Castles in Spain," then to "Blockade" . It deals with two simple sheperd named Marco (Henry Fonda) and Luis (Leo Carrillo) who are forced to take up arms to defend his land during the Spanish Civil War . Along the way Marco falls in love with Russian aristocrat called Norma (Madeleine Carroll) whose father named Basil (Vladimir Sokoloff) is involved in espionage . Later on , Norma is also obligated to spy for Andre Gallinet (John Halliday) . There takes place a blockade about the small location named Castelmare with posters explaining : ¨Warning . Do not discuss military matters with strangers . Beware spies ¨.

The story doesn't take sides and was prohibited in some American cities in USA day since . Of course , it was also banned in Spain . The tale does not attempt to favor any cause in the present conflict. Care has been taken to prevent any costume of the production from being accurately that of either side in the Spanish civil war . The film was nominated Best Music, Original Score composed by Werner Janssen . Kurt Weill even wrote music for the original project that was never used. The movie can be seen nowadays as a War/romance/drama with some exciting images , well organized crowd and thrilling scenes . The topic of the Spanish Civil War was politically sensitive and there is some hint that the upheavals of the original project were due to the political content of the film. Much of the dialogue for the movie was supplied by the black-listed John Howard Lawson who was nominated ACademy Award for Best Writing, Original Story and novelist James M Cain (though uncredited and famous author of ¨The postman always rings twice¨) wrote interesting dialogs . The picture was professionally directed by William Dieterle but this film Blockade(1938) was too libertarian to keep him completely from the shadow of suspicion as a socialist sympathizer.

This German director had great artistic style and worked with much energy in providing some of Hollywood's and the world's crown jewels of cinematic art. He immigrated to the US and was in Hollywood by 1930s with the offer of directing for Warner Bros. and began directing their series of German-language versions of released films, including: Those Who Dance (1930), The Way of All Men (1930) and subsequently directing dramas (Scarlet down , Fog over Frisco , Fashions), costumer (Kismet,Omar Khayyan) and biopics (Life of Emile Zola , Dr Ehrlich , Juarez , Madame Curie , Reuter) that were a revelation at the box-office. Dieterle some of Warner's American output (his first, The Last Flight (1931), is now regarded as a masterwork) which would ramp up to his being at the helm of six pictures a year through 1934. After that , he directed an extravaganza ,William Shakespeare's "A Midsummers Night's Dream" . Dieterle would direct Paul Muni for Warner's in three first-rate Bio movies: The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and Juarez (1939) Oscar nominations in all of them. After that , Dieterle moved on to do The hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) at RKO with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo that was one of Dieterle's best efforts . Through the 1940s, Dieterle moved around among the studios executing always vigorously wrought film work, such as, two 1940 Bios with Edward G. Robinson at Warner's. He became associated with independent producer David O. Selznick and actor Joseph Cotten first with his direction of I'll be seeing you (1944). Rating 'Blockade' : 6 , acceptable and passable . Worthwhile watching .