JORIS IVENS' "THE SPANISH EARTH" Author(S): Thomas Waugh Source: Cinéaste , 1983, Vol

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"Men Cannot Act in Front of the Camera in the Presence of Death": JORIS IVENS' "THE SPANISH EARTH" Author(s): Thomas Waugh Source: Cinéaste , 1983, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1983), pp. 21-29 Published by: Cineaste Publishers, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/41686180

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This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms "Men Cannot Act in Front of the Camera in the Presence of Death" JORIS IVENS' THE SPANISH EARTH

by Thomas Waugh

The first installment of this article burning , churches and the like - as which Jocussed on the political and well as expensive and difficult to piy artistic background to the production out of the notoriously reactionary oj Joris Ivens' Spanish Earth, newsreel companies. The group then appeared in our Vol. XII , No. 2 issue.decided to finish the project as quickly and cheaply as possible, which Van Dongen did using a Dos Passos commentary and relying on Soviet footage that the Franco rebellion posed of the front. This feature-length work, As a that soon serious a theserious as Franco threat, threat, it became rebellion Ivens Ivens apparent assem- assem- posed called Spain in Flames, was hurriedly bled the group of leftist artists and in-released in February 1937. Mean- tellectuals who were to become the while, the producers decided to put producing body for a Spanish mostfilm. of their hopes on a film of greater Their idea was to bolster American scope to be shot from scratch on Span- support for the Republican cause ish soil,by personally underwriting a means of a short, quickly made budget com- of $ 18,000. Ivens would direct. pilation of news reel material. This As the autumn progressed, the need would explain the issues to the Amer-for the film became more and more ican public and counter the already urgent: the left press began denounc- skillful Franquist propaganda. ing They the German and Italian interven- called themselves Contemporary tions and the Western democracies be- Historians, Inc., and had as their gan nervously discussing neutrality. spokespeople the Pulitzer Prize- By the time Ivens arrived in Paris in winning poet Archibald MacLeish the and first bitter January of the war, a the novelist John Dos Passos, both tentative scenario in his pocket, he well-known fellow-travelers. Lillian Hell- had already been preceded by the first man and Dorothy Parker were the other of the International Brigades, and by a pillars of the group, with Hellman's growing stream of Western artists, in- Broadway producer, Herman Shumlin, tellectuals, and activists, including recruited to act as the film's producer. filmmakers from the Soviet Union and Helen Van Dongen was to put together England. the film. It soon became clear, howev- In Valencia, suddenly the new Re- er, that not enough good footage was publican capital because of the pre- available and that even the shots at sumed imminence of the fall of Ma- hand were of limited use since they drid, Ivens and John Ferno, his cine- were taken from the Franco side - matographer from the Dutch days,

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms joined up with Dos Passos and got years. The village would be a di- and his collaborators attempted to right to work. They soon concluded, agrammatic cross-section of Spanish telescope it into a simple narrative however, that their script was un- society as a whole, and various melo- idea involving Julian, a peasant who workable in the worsening situation. dramatic or allegorical touches would has joined the Republican army. Even Drafted by Ivens together with Hell- highlight the various social forces in this scaled-down role was only partly man and MacLeish, it emphasized the play - there were to be representative realized since Julian disappeared in background to the war and a step by fascists, militarists, landowners, cler- the frontline confusion after his vil- step chronology of the Spanish revolu- gy, intelligentsia, even German inter- lage sequences had been filmed. tion, calling for considerable drama- ventionists and the ex-king! Ivens was Julian, an undistinctive-looking tization. The Republicans they con- clearly intending to expand his first young peasant, appeared in only four sulted urged them instead to head experiments along these lines in scenes of the final film, stretched out straight for Madrid to find their sub- Komsomol and Borinage (where strik- by the editor to a maximum: a brief ject in the action on the front line. As ing miners had reenacted their moment on the Madrid front where he the film's commentary would later clashes with police and bailiffs, the lat- is seen writing a letter home, the text make clear, "Men cannot act in front of ter impersonated by strikers in theat- provided in an insert and read by the the camera in the presence of death." rical costumes). The script called for commentator; a scene where he is • some elements of newsreel reportage seen hitching a ride back home on to be worked in as well. leave to Fuenteduena, with a flash- The abandoned script merits a The brief final version of Spanish Earth back reminder of the letter; next, his look, however, as an indicator of turned out to be much more complex reunion first with his mother and where American radical documentar- formally than the original outline then with his whole family; and final- ists saw themselves heading in called 1936. for, an improvised hybrid of ly, a sequence where he drills the vil- Based largely on dramatized narrative many filmic modes, but certain ele- lage boys in an open space. The foot- and semi-fictional characterization, ments of the outline remained. The age was insufficient even for these its only American precursors would most important of these was the scenes, no- so that the commentator must have been the films of Flaherty, some tion of a village as a microcosm ofensure the our recognition of Julian by scattered Film and Photo League Spanish revolution. The chosen vil- repeating his name and fleshing out shorts, and Paul Strand's anomalous lage, Fuenteduena, was ideal in this the details of the narrative. The reun- Mexican Redes , completed but not and yet every other respect. Its location on ion scene would be the biggest chal- released at this point. The more likely the Madrid- Valencia lifeline was sym- lenge to editor Van Dongen. She was to model was the Soviet Socialist Realist bolically apt, a link between village re- improvise, using closeups of villagers semi-documentary epic, of which volution and war effort. It was also apparently shot for other uses, and Ivens' own Komsomol (1932) was an visually stunning, set near the ingeniously Tagus fabricate a fictional mini- important prototype. River amid a rolling landscape, scene and from unrelated material, where The Spanish Earth script followed accessible to Madrid. Politically, too, Julian's small brother runs to fetch the chronology of a village's political the village was ideal: the community their father from the fields upon his growth over a period of six or seven had reclaimed a former hunting pre- arrival. The family thus shown in this years,, from the fall of the monarchy serve of aristocrats, now fled, and had sentimental but effective scene would until the fictional retaking of the vil- begun irrigating their new land. The be largely synthetic. After Julian's dis- lage from Franquist forces during the filmmakers could thus keep their ori- appearance, a symbolic close-up of an present conflict. A single peasant ginal theme of agrarian reform and anonymous soldier was taken for the family was to be featured, particularly hints of the original dramatic conflict defiant finale of the film. their young son whose evolution between landowners and peasantry. But this forced postponement of would be emblematic of the Spanish As for the originell cloak-and-dagger Ivens' dream of "personalization" did peasantry's maturation during those plot about the young villager, Ivens not stand in the way of other efforts to heighten the personal quality of the film. At every point in Spanish Earth, the filmmakers would intervene in the post-production to make individual fi- gures come alive dramatically: through the commentary, as when a briefly seen Republican officer is iden- tified by name and then laconically eulogized when it is disclosed that he was killed after the filming; or through complex editing procedures, as when a miniature story of two boys killed in the bombing of Madrid is chillingly wrought out of noncontinuous shots and a synthetic flash-frame detona- tion; or through lingering close-ups of anonymous bystanders and onlook- ers, some of whom are even dramatized through first-person commentary. Several years later, Ivens would conclude that such vignettes, "hasty and attempted identities now and then walking through a documentary," had fallen short of his goal of continuous "personalization" and that his next project on the Sino- [ Gunners targeting a fascist holdout on the outskirts of Madrid in Spanish Earth. |

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Japanese front, The Four Hundred Million , had been no less frustrating. It would not be until Ivens' third Amer- ican film, The Power and the Land (1940), that the relative luxury of peacetime filmmaking would allow him to experiment with fixed charac- ters developed consistently throughout an entire film, in this case, a wholesome American farm family. •

"Personalization" was not the only aspect of the Fuenteduena shooting that imitated Hollywood narrative. Us- ing thejr heavy tripod-based Debrie camera, Ivens and Ferno developed a kind of documentary "mise-en- scène," a collaborate shooting style staging "real" actors in "real" settings. Eventually constituting about two- fifths of the film, Ivens' mise-en-scène was an even more aggressive intervention in the events being filmed than Flaherty's collaboration with his sub- Loyalist soldiers survey a battlefield in Spanish Earth . jects. Ivens matter-of-factly used the vocabulary of studio filmmaking such as "retake" and "covering shot"; on " vérité " orthodoxy is today. Filmmak- ing. location, he set up shot-countershot ers and critics of the late Thirties Mise-en-scène , however, a luxury constructions with his peasant sub- agreed on the need for a dramatization affordable in the calm of Fuenteduena, jects that aimed at the spatio-temporal of the factual, its "vivification," as was rarely possible on the front lines. continuity of studio fiction of the some put it. This trend was partly inIn Madrid, the filmmakers attached period, complete with complementaiy reaction to the impersonality of the themselves to the communist-affili- angles of a single action and insert newsreels and the other journalistic ated Fifth Regiment in the Casa de close-ups of detail. This approach en- media, "^s I making a film or just Velasquez. Here they shot the siege of abled not only a clear chronological newsreel shots?", Ivens would ask of the city from the point of view of both summary of the Fuenteduena irriga- Spanish Earth. Truth was not a func- its defenders in the front line suburbs tion work as it progressed before the tion of phenomenological scruple but and the air raid shelters within the camera, Ivens' emblem of the Spanish of political principle. Truth was not cityto itself. By the time of the key battle revolution, but also, the balanced and be found on the surface of reality, butof Brihuega (Guadalajara) in March, lyrical, even romantic, framings and in deeper social, economic, and histor- Ernest Hemingway, a recent convert movements that idealized the workers ical structures. The esthetic of natur- to the Republican cause, had replaced and their relationship to the Spanish alist spontaneity in film was to be Dosdis- Passos as the production's guide earth. trusted as much as "spontaneism" in and literary mentor. At Brihuega, Ivens was of course not alone in "set- the arena of political strategy. The buoyed by an important contingent of ting up" his subjects: the other major generation of filmmakers who de- the International Brigades, the Re- documentais ts of the period, from veloped mise-en-scène as a documen- publicans won a major victory against Basil Wright to Pare Lorentz, all used tary mode believed, like their cousins a twelve-to-one firepower disadvan- variations of the same method. It is the Socialist Realists, that their work tage and prevented the besieged capit- this element that looks most dated to had the vocation not only to reflect the al from being cut off. The battle's addi- our cinéma-vérité- trained eyes. For world but also to act upon it, to change tional political significance was the in- Richard Leacock, narrative mise-en- it. This was true even for liberals and controvertible proof it offered that scène led to the "dark ages of the docu- social democrats like Lorentz and organized Italian units were taking mentary" and, for modernist critics Grierson who did not subscribe to part - Italian casualties and their let- like Viada Pétrie, mise-en-scène Marxist ideals. Ivens' primary ques- ters home are shown in a particularly meant the "[abandonment of] the con- tion was not whether he had shown moving scene of Spanish Earth (a cept of film as a genuine visual art the "truth" but whether "the truth has scene that would lead to a fruitless which draws its content from those been made convincing enough to screening at the League of Nations). kinesthetic qualities only cinema make can people want to change or emu- Brihuega features prominently in the bring to life. . . Z'1 Ivens, however, late did the situation shown to them on last half of the final version of Ivens' not often have to answer to such ahis- the screen." film. The battle material, from both toric criticism at the time. The inter- This is not to say that documentary Madrid and Brihuega, as well as from ventionist orthodoxy of the late Thir- mise-en-scène would have appeared one other village that the filmmakers ties was no less universal than the to Thirties spectators in the same way shot under bombardment, has a style as fictional narrative cinema. An over- whose spontaneity is diametrically whelming network of "documentary" opposite to the orderly, lyrical mise- 1 Leacock, cited by Russell Campbell, codes Cinema prevented it from doing so, from en-scène of Fuenteduena. Strikes Back: Radical Filmmaking in the nonsynchronous sound, to nonmade- The "spontaneous" mode, relying United States, 1930-1942 (UMI Research up faces, to specific marketing ap- primarily on the crew's two small Press, 1982), p. 282; Petric, Soviet Revolu- hand-cameras, is notable for the unre- tionary Films in America (1926-35), dis- proaches, to the replacement of sertation NYU 1973, pp. 460-62. "psychological" typing by "social" typ- hearsed flexibility and mobility re-

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms quired to cover the soldiers and civi- of the finished film but deserves brief most documentaries of the late Thir- lian victims who could not "act before mention nonetheless. These static, ties. Other national traditions were the camera." This mode, as Ivens had controlled images of public events, varying the hybrid model according to not foreseen while scriptwriting in taken with a heavy, stationary cam- local factors. Grierson's British direc- New York, would make up more than era, I call the "newsreel" mode because tors tended to use mise-en-scène half of the finished film. With this its repertory is identifcal to that of the more than Ivens, even resorting to stu- style, the camera operator, rather newsreel companies of the period - dio work on occasion; Cartier- than rearranging an event in front of ceremonious long shots of files of dig- Bresson's cinematography for Fron- the lens, follows it spontaneously - the nitaries, cheering crowds, military pa- tier Films' second Spanish project, storming of a building, a run for cover rades, or beauty contests. Though Fight/or Life (1938), was more "spon- during an air raid, the evacuation of Ivens and other leftists and liberals taneous" than any other comparable children, panic in the streets of the usually avoided "newsreel" shooting film. The general trend, however, was bombed-out village. The principles of as much out of distaste for clichés and towards greater and greater use of spatio-temporal continuity were left superficiality as from any idiological mise-en-scène. In this respect, Ivens' for the editor to find in the cans: it was scruple, the opportunity to use a bor- evolution paralleled the work of almost too dangerous for the operator to rowed newsreel soundtrack to record a every documentar ist of the period. think about retakes and reverse shots. People's Army rally was one Ivens Wherever circumstances and re- "Spontaneous" shooting provided could not refuse. Newsreel-style cine- sources permitted - not always the spectators with its own distinctive matography was the only means by case as buildup towards world war documentary codes, distinct from which Thirties documentaries could continued - documentarists almost those of mise-en-scène material often attempt synchronous sound on unanimouslyloca- built up the mise-en- present, as in Spanish Earth, in the tion - twenty years would pass before scène components of their hybrid same film or even the same sequence: technology would catch up, in the works, tele- experimenting more and more unmotivated and random detail of be- vision age, with the aspiration to with hear characterization, narrative vo- havior or atmosphere, the flouting as of well as to see "life-caught- cabulary, and even scripting. Writers taboos on out of focus material, look- unawares. " In any case, the rally scene became standard crew members, not ing at the camera, illegibility, and ofso Spanish Earth featured the stirring only for commentaries, but also to pro- on. The mystique of "life-caught- oratory of La Pasionaria and other Re-vide plots, continuity, and dialogue. unawares" was still an essential ele- publican leaders (some dubbed in NewDuring the Forties, this mode became ment of the documentary sensibility York because of technical problems), the basic component of most despite the universali acceptance and, for of this reason, as well as for its documentary, rivalled only by the com- mise-en-scène. Because of this mys- skillful editorial compression, would pilation mode for which the war had tique, "spontaneous" elements often avoid the pitfalls of the mode. It was up created a special market, and the had the greatest impact on spectators, to Riefenstahl and the Nazis to elevate dominance of "mise-en-scène" would at least on reviewers: the reviews of the to a new art form the "newsreel" continue right up until the explosion day never failed to mention a woman clichés of orators intercut with cheer- of cinéma-vérité in the late Fifties. seen wiping her eye amid the rubble ofing crowds; the only phase of Ivens' • her village. The great sensitivity ofcareer to depend on this mode was his "spontaneous" material such as this Cold War exile in East Germany where Meanwhile Helen Van Dongen had in Spanish Earth has confirmed he presided over several official rally begun assembling the consignments Ivens' reputation as a major inheritor films of the fading Stalin era. of rushes in New York as they arrived of Vertov and a precursor of cinéma- Spanish Earth, then, unexpectedly from Spain, wiring the filmmakers vérité. became a cinematic hybrid in the un- whenever she thought that a given It was in Madrid also that Ivens shot controllable laboratory of war and rev- topic was now well covered or that some material in a third cinematic olution. In this, as a compendium of another was weak. When the shooting mode that constitutes only a fraction different filmic modes, it was typical of wound up in May, she began in ear- nest, shaping sequences shot according to each of the three modes according to the methods of narrative continuity that she had perfected in her recent Hòllywood apprenticeship. In- dividual sequences began emerging - the Fuenteduena irrigation project, civilians under bombardment, the Madrid and Brihuega fronts - each built strictly with the sequential and temporal logic of short fictional units. Obviously, the "spontaneous" rushes presented the most challenge since they had not been shot "for the editor. " But she responded with ingenuity, building up to each split-second bomb impact with systematic precision and then having the clearing smoke reveal the rubble and the panic, or following each Republican artillery shot with an image denoting an on- target hit. Part of her skill was in picking out visual motifs to assure a narrative fluidity; images of children in a bombed-out I The spontaneous mode: village women fleeing aerial bombardment in Spanish Earth . street, for example, or a repeated

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms "In countering images of victimization with images of resistance and revolution, Spanish Earth articulates a worldview that sees people as agents of history, not its casualties. The final word is given not to the airborne mercenaries and their bombs, but to the people rooted in the central symbol of the film, the earth."

i i glimpsQ people rooted in the central symbol of chosen silence and subtle transitions. of an ambulance or an artillery the film, the earth. In alternating the The sound effects functioned essen- shell, would underline an implied continuity. Sometimes a minor but military resistance with the civilian tially as support for the narrative identifiable bystander would function struggle, Spanish Earth equates thrust of the film, however, heighten- as a hinge for a continuity: her choice them, merges them into the ideologic- ing the especially powerful scenes to cut at the point when a background al concept of the people's war. Ivens such as the bombardment episodes, figure in the People's Army rally blows would return again and again to this injecting dramatic and informational his nose has drawn the admiration of visual and ideological construct as he energy into scenes that were less in- at least one critic. Seldom before had continued to chronicle the people's teresting visually, such as the long the principles of fictional narrative struggles of our era, from China and shot Brihuega ones, and in general editing been so skillfully and unobtru- the Soviet Union to Cuba and Viet- providing "realistic" background tex- sively adapted for the purposes of nam, non- each time echoing the Spanishture to each of the film's narrative fiction. The abandonment of the mod- Earth equation of peasants in their lines. ernist-derived editing strategies of fieldsthe and soldiers on the frontlines, of Continuing the Popular Front prac- young Ivens in his avant-garde days hoes - and guns. tice of lining up prestigious contribu- for example, unsettling contrasts in • tors, Ivens recruited two of the best- scale, angle, and movement direction, known East Coast composers to han- or ironic or dialectical idea-cutting, Ivens and Van Dongen brought dle the to music: Marc Blitzstein, the in- often Soviet-inspired - was a price the soundtrack of Spanish Earth house the composer of the New York left, that Ivens and Van Dongen were will- same embrace of popular narrative and Virgil Thomson, who had been ing to pay to achieve the Popular Front film language as was evident in the widely acclaimed for his brilliant folk goal of speaking the narrative film lan- shooting and editing, and the same score for The Plow that Broke the guage of the people. creative resourcefulness in integrat- Plains. Blitzstein and Thomson, Within the emerging film as a whole, ing it to their political task. The mod- pressed by the filmmakers' tight Van Dongen alternated short scenes of ernist virtuosity and clamorous ex- schedule, compiled Spanish folk the military struggle and the social perimentation of Ivens' early sound music, both instrumental and choral, revolution, interweaving the themes documentaries yielded to the subdued for the score. This choice reflected not of the combat in Madrid and Brihuega purposefulness of the Popular Front. only their haste but also the influence with the progress of the Fuenteduena The sound effects were innovative to of the documentary movement on irrigators. Two stunning scenes de- the extent that Van Dongen ex- musical taste of the late Thirties and picting the bombardment of civilians perimented with more convincing the impact of Plow. The filmmakers fit were placed at a climactic point about laboratory synthesis (on-location the music to the images with discre- two- thirds of the way through the fifty- sound effects were still primitive) and tion and sensitivity, with expressive two minute film, so that the conclud- varied the newsreel cliché of wall-to- pauses that contrast sharply with the ing movement, the victorious battle wall noise with moments of well- "wall-to-wall" tendencies of the period, interpolated with the completion of even of "prestige" films like Triumph the irrigation system, seems like a de- of the Will and Man of Aran. The te- fiant riposte of the people against their dious over-synchronization that is oppressors. A coda alternates single also noticeable in the same two films shots of water rushing through the was likewise avoided, with generad new irrigation trough and images of a atmospheric matching being the guid- lone rifleman firing, so that the two ing principle instead: sprightly dance themes, defense and revolution, are rhythms accompany the villagers at summarized and fused, two dimen- work in the field and a soft dirge-like sions of a single struggle. choral piece follows the village bom- The alternating pattern of civilian bardment with just the right under- and military struggles was therefore stated, elegiac touch. not just an effective editing device but It was the commentary, however, also a crucial ideological statement. In that attracted more attention than countering images of victimization any of the other soundtracks, and not with images of resistance and revolu- only because of its star author. Hem- tion, Spanish Earth articulates a ingway's text is a high point in the worldview that sees people as agents of benighted history of an art form of du- history, not its casualties. The final bious legitimacy, the documentary The newsreel mode: La Pasionaria word is given not to the airborne mer- commentary, and unusually prophet- addresses a People's Army rally cenaries and their bombs, but to the ! ic in its anticipation of future develop- in Spanish Earth .

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ments in documentary sound. What rent myth of how sound operated in The glitter and the publicity photos was most striking to contemporary the classical documentary. This myth, with Joan Crawford were not for the spectators was its personal quality. emanating mostly from Screen maga- sake of vanity. The West Coast connec- Ivens, Van Dongen, and Hellman made zine, depicts the classical sound tions were deemed essential to the a last-minute decision to replace documentary as an "illustrated lec- filmmakers' hopes for commercial dis- Orson Welles' slick reading with a less ture," a film dominated by a direct tribution. Political documentaries professional recording by Hemingway address commentaiy to which images had never received distribution by the himself. This voice, with its frank, played a mere supporting role.2 "majors" up to this point, but the over- low-key roughness, added to the text's Trained within the silent avant-garde whelming feeling was that a break- aura of personal involvement. It was cinema, a Ivens and Van Dongen had through was imminent, thanks to striking contrast to the oily, author- nothing but contempt for this "illus- Lorentz's obstinate and successful itarian voice-of-God for which The tration" approach, and usually suc- campaign the previous year to distrib- March of Time was famous and whichceeded in avoiding it, commissioning ute Plow through independent exhibi- most documentaries imitated. Instead commentaries only after an auton- tors. But the fanfare was deceptive. of an anonymous voice, the commen- omous image-continuity had been Variety summed up Ivens' predica- tator became a vivid character on his established and then reducing them ment: own terms, a subjective witness of ferociously. the Most of the British direc- events of the film, a participant. tors in the Grierson stable did the This can make money where any Though this function of the narrator same, as did Flaherty, Lorentz, andpicture can make money but it was already common in Popular Front Vertov. Jennings and Riefenstahl won't did make it there. It won't print journalism, Hemingway's con- away with the commentary almost make it there because it won't get tribution to Spanish Earth set off a completely. Van Dongen had her own in there. It will have to depend as trend in documentary film that would simple test of silencing the sound- it did here in its world premiere, last throughout World War II, with track to test the visuali sufficiency of a on lecture halls which are wired filmmakers as different as Flaherty, given film. Spanish Earth must be Jor sound and can gross enough John Huston, and Humphrey Jen- seen as a highlight of a whole tradition in one peiformance to justify a nings benefiting from his example, an of experiments in sound-image struc- week's buildup. effective substitute for the still im- tures that fought against the voice-of- possible ideal of using sound to makeGod tedium of the newsreels (and the Nothing is new under the sun. The subjects come alive on location. later wartime compilation films) in filmmakers resigned themselves to the Hemingway's text had other innova- search of creative alternatives for the traditional marginalized distribution tive aspects, too - its obliqueness, stillits new audiovisual art form. Our that political, documentary, and variations in tone, its detail and im- sense of documentary history must Soviet be films had always relied on. The mediacy, its multiplicity of postures revised to accommodate this tradi- film opened August 20th at the 55th towards the spectator, its ability to betion, just as the dream factory/assem- Street Playhouse. While this art thea- at times dramatic and at times lyrical bly line model of Hollywood history ter was has one level above the usual Soviet or reflective without being overbear- long since been shaped to account purgatory for downtown, Ivens' dis- ing. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, the Capras and the Fords. appointment was profound, and re- was its restraint. Ivens and Heming- Hemingway's commentary was cord-breaking capacity crowds scarce- way concentrated on "letí ting] the film spoken live at a June preview of Span- ly consoled him. The film's small leftist speak for itself," on avoiding words ish Earth, in silent rough cut, at the distributor, Garrison Films, tried to that would duplicate the image- Second National Congress of Amer- repeat Plow's success. The ads played continuity, on providing "sharp little ican Writers, a grouping of leftist and up the Hemingway name so much that guiding arrows" of text, "spring- liberal writers. Hemingway declared to Spanish Earth was often called a boards," often at the beginning of a the assembly that "Spain is the first Hemingway film, a prestige-oriented scene, to invite the audience's involve- real battlefield in an evil and interna- tactic that was buoyed by the film's ment. The commentary's role as in- tional conflict that is certain to recur inclusion in the National Board of Re- formation and exposition was second- elsewhere," something presumably view's "ten best" list for 1937. Audi- ary. Not surprisingly, it is in the most of those present already knew. ences In more interested in entertain- strongly narrative mise-en-scène pas- order to ensure that the film would ment were assured how undocumen- sages set in Fuenteduena that the reach those who did not already know tary-like the film was: it was "The Pi- commentary intervenes least, and in this, a massive publicity campaign cure got with a Punch," and a "Dramatic the extreme long shot accounts of underway. In July, a White House Story pre- of Life and People in a Wartorn artillery and infantry combat where it view led to a plug in Eleanor Village in Spain. " Further publicity re- is, of necessity, most present, and, Roosevelt's column, the impossible sulted from shortlived censorship arguably, most effective. Hemingway's dream of all Popular Front filmmak- squabbles in Rhode Island and Penn- text was ultimately laid over only one- ers. Immediately thereafter, Ivens and sylvania. A review in The Nation dur- fifth of the image track. This was an Hemingway arrived in Los Angeles for ing the film's third New York month, all-time record for conciseness in the huge sell out premieres and private while acknowledging the bind of inde- classical documentary (during the fund raising screenings within Holly- pendent distribution, optimistically war, Frank Capra's Why We Fight wood's progressive circles, where reported that Ivens was making prog- films would sometimes approach four- $20,000 was collected for Republican ress and announced that more than fifths, as did regularly the Canadian medical relief. eight hundred theaters across the National Film Board films), but Ivens' U.S. had been signed up. The real fi- record was often rivaled by some of his 2 This incomplete and misleading description gure was closer to three hundred. In more visually oriented contemporary of the classical sound documentary can otherbe words, the film made an enviable documentarists . found in such otherwise groundbreaking arti- splash in the art house/political circles on documentary as Bill Nichols' A careful look at the commentary in cuit, but a mere ripple in the commer- "Documentary Theory and Practice" ( Screen , cial sea. Ivens would not achieve his Spanish Earth , as well as in most Vol. 17, No. 4) and Annette Kuhn's " Desert films by the "art" documentarists of Victory and the People's War" ( Screen , Vol. 22, breakthrough until his own New Deal- the day, undermines a prevailing cur- No. 2). sponsored film, Power and the Land,

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Left to right: Joris Ivens, Luise Rainer, Joan Crawford, Ernest Hemingway and his wife at Hollywood fund-raising screening of Spanish Earth (photo courtesy of Jean-Loup Passek). in 1940. As part of this movement, Spanish tain Popular Front ring to it. There is a Looking back at his most famous Earth reflected many of its cultural clear division of responsibilities film for Cinéma politique , from and the ideological tactics that were notamong the workers and the Mayor dis- vantage point of the late Seventies, directly related to the Spanish subject. plays a certain leadership, even de- Ivens felt that he could identify aThe cer- agrarian theme, for example, with livering a subtitled speech announc- tain impact that Spanish Earth hadits basic icons of bread, earth, and wa- ing the project. Ivens carefully avoids exerted on its own period: ter, was central to the Depression im- all possible innuendoes of collectiviza- agination. Ivens' climactic image of tion, forced or otherwise; authority Of course you must not think that water rushing through a new irriga- springs, spontaneously, out of an im- you are going to change the world tion trough had already appeared in plied tradition of folk common sense. with a film; all the same , there King Vidor's Our Daily Bread ( 1934) Though the Fuenteduena scenes have been examples in history andof Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin establish a full catalog of the material films that have helped the re- (1934), and impoverished migrant terms of the village collective, with im- volution, like the Soviet films at workers and sharecroppers had been peccable Marxist attention to the the beginning of the October Re- the focus of countless photographic forces of production, it does so in a volution. In my own life , I saw the essays and books, as well as Lorentz's way that lets the signals of tradition, influence of Spanish Earth first two films. The Fuenteduena exoticism, and patience, conven- also: . . .it really provided in- peasants were thus recognizable, tionally uni- attached to the peasant icon formation about a problem that versell, as were Hemingway's vague in Western re- culture, overshadow the spectators were not very familiar ferences to the "they" who "held signals us of revolutionary changes. Dis- with, and it helped the antifas- back." Yet Ivens' Socialist Realist cretion is the distinguishing feature of cist movement enormously tinted vision of the cheerful collective this vision of the agrarian revolution . . . directly even. People gave work of his villagers lacks the plain- taking place in the Spanish country- money for the International Bri- tive, almost defeatist feeling of most side during the Popular Front. gades. There are militant films American or Western European agrar- Meanwhile, another theme emerges that have enormous power, and ian imagery. The primitive irrigation in Spanish Earth for virtually the first that is linked to the moment at project of Spanish Earth will seeming- time in Ivens' career: the family. This which they are shown. ly feed an entire besieged capital. What theme revolves primarily around Ju- is more, the collective, non-hierarchi- lian's homecoming sequence, but it is Ivens' estimation is not unreason- cal initiative of the peasants are be- also notable elsewhere: in the images able. Although his film had no hindimpact this success, not the expertise of of two distraught mothers, one trying to load her children on an evacuation on the League of Nations or the the West- New Deal agronomists who dis- ern governments, it was part pense of thetheir advice on crop rotation truck in besieged Madrid, the other in expanding cultural and political upon move- the helpless denizens of the bombed village unconsolably be- ment of the Popular Front period, Lorentz's pro- films from on high. wailing her slaughtered children, and viding an impetus while it was All still the same, Iven's refusal of a cer- in a young soldier's goodbye to his wife and child before the final battle, ele- growing in influence and expanding tain Socialist Realist dogmatism in its base. his vision of collective work has a cer- vated by Hemingway into a symbol of

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms "Hemingway's voice, with its frank, low-key roughness, added to the text's aura of personal involvement. . . . Instead of an anonymous voice, the commentator became a vivid character on his own terms, a subjective witness of the events of the film, a participant."

the strength, courage, and tragedy of Spanish Earth, the first of the the major quality of everyday life. In the pa- the family unit at war: antifascist films with widespread rade dis- scenes, there is more interest in tribution, initiated a preoccupation the rawness of recruits eagerly joining . . . they say the old goodbyes with military imagery that would up than in the precision of seasoned that sound the same in any lan- dominate the screens of the next dec- troops, more interest in small irregu- guage. She says she'll wait He ade, and does so in a specifically Popu- lar groups than in the symmetrical says that he'll come back. Take lar Front manner. Beyond Ivens' re- formations of Riefenstahl's films. The care of the kid , he says. I will, she spectful treatment of soldiering as Nazi ballets of banners and boots have says, but knows she can't. They work, not surprising in the work of a nothing in common with the human both know that when they move filmmaker who had romanticized the scale and detail of Ivens' People's you out in trucks , it's to a battle. construction of North Sea dikes and Army. Soviet blast furnaces, his emphasis At theis same time, Ivens' attitude to- Compared to later populist-agrarian on the humanity of the Republican wards the Communist Party, its parti- films like Flaherty's The Land, ( 1940- troops. The soldiers are presented as cipation in the Republican government, 42), Ford's The Grapes of Wrath little men, nonprofessionals. Shots and its leadership of the People 's Army (1940), or Renoir's The Southerner showing "unsoldierly" signals are follows the usual Popular Front prac- (1945), the family accent in Spanish present throughout - untidiness, tice of "self-censorship." Specific poli- Earth is decidedly minor. Neverthe- awkward drilling, grins at the camera. tical affiliations, whether of Ivens' less, it clearly points to Popular Front In one sequence about life in camp, subjects, his hosts, or of Ivens himself, strategy of recuperating the values of the emphasis is on everyday nonmilit- were not a topic for discussion. A film mainstream culture: idealized fami- ary activities such as getting haircuts, courting mass distribution and lies were highly visible in Frontier eating, reading newspapers, with the Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as following Films' productions as well. implication that the stake of the war is the CPUSA line, declined of necessity

I vens, Hemingway, and Ludwig Renn of the International Brigades on location in Spain (photo courtesy of Jay Leyda).

This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sun, 19 Jul 2020 08:17:33 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms to identify the lineup of Communist formulate the concept of the people's speakers during the People's Army ral- war, a concept that would gain con- ly scene: for example, La Pasionaria, siderably in currency over the next CRITICAL I Jose Diaz, and others appear as "the generations of world history, and to wife of a poor miner in Asturias," or a insert this concept into mainstream "member of Parliament," and so on. public discourse. Of course the price ARTS Explicit political labels complicated Ivens and his contemporaries paid for Published since 1980, Critical Arts is the the broad-based popular coalitions this achievement - the soft-pedaling only South African journal which offers that were the mainstay of the Popular of specific radical programs and perspectives on relations between the Front, as well as the effectiveness of identity, the adoption of popular film- media and society. It is a cue for creating Republican propaganda within the ic forms - are still fiercely debated alternative dimensions to stereotyped Western democracies. The existence of even to this day. But it was a price that views on film, TV, performance, press the International Brigades, composed the filmmakers of the Popular Front and popular culture. primarily of Western leftists, passes paid in full conscience. Critical Arts challenges the existing unmentioned. Other important gaps social structure in South Africa, aims to • in Iveris' coverage of the war are con- develop radical critical approaches and is spicuous: Soviet aid to the Republi- What of Spain? How successful concerned were with media in a Third World cans; the question of the Church, the a filmmakers in their short term context major focus of pro-Franquist prop- pragmatic objectives? The commer- Published 3 times a year. aganda; the identification of the cial success of their film in its art enemy - the Italians and the Moroccan house/political circuit quickly The establishment refuse to recognise us. mercenaries are discussed in surpri- accumulated the funds to buy eight- Isn't it time you did? Subscribe now. singly respectful or pitying terms, but een ambulances, which were sent to the Spanish classes who supported Madrid for assembly and deployment. R3.50 ($8.00) (£3.50) for 4 issues Franco's insurrection are omitted, as Late in the war, when the situation R1.00 ($2.50) (70p) for individual issues is the name of Franco, and even the was hopeless (for ambulances save Institutions add R2.00 ($2.00) (£1.00) word "fascist" (other than in one ex- lives, not wars), Hemingway gave a

cerpted speech); and, finally, acknow- special presentation of Spanish Earth Name ledgement of the political struggle in Barcelona where a real air raid tem- going on within the Republican camp porarily interrupted Van Dongen's Address at the time, which would later come to synthetic ones. The film was revived in a head in the Communist-Anarchist New York in February 1939 just in time showdown in Barcelona near the end for the final triumph of Franco. Its of the war. Although this latter deci-next revival came upon the death of sion to underline Loyalist unity is Franco in 1975, throughout Europe hardly surprising, there are works -and nowhere more eagerly than in André Malraux's L'Espoir (1937), for Spain, a monument to the struggles A Journal for exaiiiple - that reflect the diversity two generations earlier of the Popular within the Republican ranks in a posi- Fronts of both the Old World and the Media Studies Write to: CRITICAL ARTS, c/o Depl of Journalisai and tive way. Of course, all of these elisions New, inspiration and instruction for Media Studies can be justified in terms of dodging the struggles that are still ahead. ■ Rhodes University, P O Box 94, Grahamstown 6140, domestic redbaiters, religious groups, South Africa and censors (who had the habit of cutting hostile references to "friendly" powers such as Italy), but they are also part of a systematic effort to depict the war as a simple nonideological struggle of "little people" against "rebels" G You're not alone! and invaders. The stakes of the war You're demonstrating against U.S. intervention in Central America. came across as "democratic" in a very You're organizing tenants to fight gentrification. You're fighting for loose sense, rather than those of class safe, legal abortion for all. You're teaching students how to think struggle. Ivens was perfectly consis- freely. You're marching for voting rights in the South. You're struggling tent with CPUSA policy, which prefer- to change the system in your own way. red in the late Thirties to call its ideolo- You're not alone. All these battles are one. And only in one gy "Americanism," stressing "demo- place do they all come together: the Guardian, North America's largest independent radical newsweekly. Twenty-four pages of non- cracy" and "civil liberties" rather than class allegiance, and soliciting the sectarian coverage of the issues and the movement every week. Incisive analysis and unmatched international reportage: the support of nonleft unions, the middle classes, elected officials, liberal intel- information you need about your own fight and the common struggle. Try a free four-week subscription to the Guardian, at absolutely lectuals, and even the clergy. mĚtĚ no obligation. Simply cut out the coupon below and mail it in today. Ivens' carefully constructed image of the Spanish war and civil revolution succeeded on that level without a doubt. The New York Times was per-

suaded after seeing the film that the address "Spanish people are fighting, not S >4for II SendSend meme four free free four issues free issues address t - broad principles of Muscovite Marx- J of the Guardian, at city ism, but for the right to the productiv- W^Ě - absolutely no obligation. ity of a land denied them through m. " ■ I Mail to: state years of absentee landlordship." Spanish Earth was the first film to |The Guardian, Dept.CE, 33 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011

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