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Credited cast: | |||
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Manuel Azaña | ... | Self (President of Spain) |
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José Díaz | ... | Self (Parliamentarian) |
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Dolores Ibárruri | ... | Self (as La Pasionaria) |
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Enrique Lister | ... | Self (Republican Army) |
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Commander Martinez de Aragón | ... | Self (Republican Army) |
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Gustav Regler | ... | Self (German writer) |
Orson Welles | ... | Narrator (English version) (later replaced by Ernest Hemingway) (voice) |
This documentary tells of the struggles during the Spanish Civil War. It deals with the war at different levels: from the political level, at the ground military level focusing on battles in Madrid and the road from Madrid to Valencia, and at the support level. With the latter, a key project was building an irrigation system for an agricultural field near Fuentedueña so that food could be grown to feed the soldiers. Written by Huggo
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.