The Spanish Earth

(1937)

★ 6.7 IMDb · 22 votes

Genres: Documentary

Year: 1937

Runtime: 53 мин

Country: United States of America

Director: Joris Ivens

Cast: Manuel Azaña, José Díaz, Dolores Ibárruri, Enrique Lister, Commander Martinez de Aragón, Gustav Regler, Орсон Уэллс, Эрнест Хемингуэй, Jean Renoir

Plot

Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.