Overview

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.

Details

Cast

Manuel Azaña

José Díaz

Dolores Ibárruri

Enrique Lister

Commander Martinez de Aragón

Gustav Regler

Orson Welles

Ernest Hemingway

Jean Renoir