Blockade (1938)A simple peasant is forced to take up arms to defend his farm during the Spanish Civil War. Along the way he falls in love with Russian whose father is involved in espionage. Director:William Dieterle |
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Blockade (1938)A simple peasant is forced to take up arms to defend his farm during the Spanish Civil War. Along the way he falls in love with Russian whose father is involved in espionage. Director:William Dieterle |
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Madeleine Carroll | ... |
Norma
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| Henry Fonda | ... |
Marco
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Leo Carrillo | ... |
Luis
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| John Halliday | ... |
Andre Gallinet
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Vladimir Sokoloff | ... |
Basil, Norma's Father
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Robert Warwick | ... |
General Vallejo
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| Reginald Denny | ... |
Edward Grant
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Peter Godfrey | ... |
Roderigo - Cafe Magician
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William B. Davidson | ... |
Commandant
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Katherine DeMille | ... |
Peasant Woman on Train
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Fred Kohler | ... |
Pietro
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Carlos De Valdez | ... |
Major del Rio
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Nick Thompson | ... |
Seppo
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George Houston | ... |
The Troubador
(as George Byron)
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Lupita Tovar | ... |
Palm Reader
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A simple peasant is forced to take up arms to defend his farm during the Spanish Civil War. Along the way he falls in love with Russian whose father is involved in espionage. Written by Herman Seifer <alagain@aol.com>
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.