The Spanish Earth

[imkichigai]

Thank you for putting this online. I enjoyed it.

[Bronzewhaler82]

The naff music is irritating but it is interesting to hear Hemingway's voice. It's the first time i've heard it

[thingthing94]

I think of this film as a genuine piece of art, its brilliant, they should put it in colour.

[madrileno89]

cual es la cancion al principio? es muy emotiva...

[stevevandien]

For anyone familiar with their voices, it's obvious that the narrator is Hemingway, not Welles.

[justicenow999]

Franco may have not been a member of the Fascist Party, but he was about as close to a Fascist as one can get.

Spanish leader Franco did not enter the war on the side of Nazi Germany, however, he permitted volunteers to join the German Army

[mariopicci]

actually you forgot that was franchist against republicans... not against comunist... read better.... and ancutally fraco was surely a fascist cause if he wasn't so why hitler and mussolini would help him against republicans???.... listen to me... read better.

[PatapaloVideo]

Yes, this is communist propaganda.... Read about this movie in the book The Breaking Point: Hemingway, dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles.

[1artabro1]

La música es gallega, y cantada en Gallego, letra de Rosalía de Castro.

[bulaperry]

An enjoyable film, about to watch more, thank you.

[barkingmad33]

La Saeta Dijo una voz popular : Quién me presta una escalera para subir al madero, para quitarle los clavos a Jesùs el Nazareno ? Oh, la saeta, el cantar al Cristo de los Gitanos siempre con sangre en las manos, siempre por desenclavar ! Cantar del pueblo andaluz, que todas las primaveras anda pidiendo escaleras para subir a la cruz !

[barkingmad33]

Cantar de la tierra mia,

que echa flores

al Jesùs de la agonia,

y es la fe de mis mayores !

Oh, no eres tù mi cantar !

No puedo cantar, ni quiero,

a ese Jesùs del madero,

sino al que anduvo en la mar !

Antonio Machado

[barkingmad33]

Terms to know in this war:

The names describing sympathizers and defenders of the legally elected government in Spain in 1936:

Loyalists

The Popular Front

Republicans

The names describing the insurrectionists that took down the legally elected government in Spain:

Rebels

Fascists

Monarchists

The National Guard (Guardia Nacional)

[barkingmad33]

Francisco Franco, the fascist General of the rebels fighting against the duly elected democratic government in Spain, was backed by Spanish monarchists, the Catholic Church and the fascist regimes in Italy and Nazi Germany. His National Guard was heavily supplemented by Moorish mercenaries from northern Africa with fascist money, troops and the German air forces. Moscow eventually backed the Loyalists. Spain became a modern weapons testing ground.

[jonathansherry12345]

Franco was never a fascist - he was a pro-monarchist. Read your history books - he never joined the Falange fascists.

[jocoya]

Not all history books agree on this issue. They conflict either FFranco was or was not a fascist. Thats why some ppl believe he was a fascist while others do not. N addition, b/c some1 doesn't join a party, does not mean their conscious &/or ideology is not fascist.

[barkingmad33]

Fearing that the success of the Popular Front would embolden other European countries, the British government flew the exiled former head of the Spanish defense forces, General Francisco Franco, into Spain to begin the insurrection.

X

Soon after the Loyalist cause was lost, and Franco installed as "el Presidente," the Governments of UK and USA readily recognized his dictatorship until his death of natural causes in the 1970s.

[barkingmad33]

An interesting aspect of history that has been so effectively buried in America, is that untrained young American men & women left campuses and jobs to fight for popular democracy (a pure American ideal) in Spain in 1937. They were members of the Lincoln Brigade. In the late 40s & 50s, they were hounded by the FBI as "premature anti-fascists", aka communists, during the McCarthy era.

[barkingmad33]

Unheralded and ignored by history, they have mostly all quietly died off. There were communist peasants, among many many others, fighting alongside of them for the loyalist cause and for this reason, these Americans were labeled communists as well. However, as Churchill appropriately stated in WWII, "I would enlist the devil himself as an ally in the fight for the survival of my country." And so would any patriot.

[barkingmad33]

Denis Brian (Hemingway biographer, The True Gen): "In his memoir, Bringing Up the Rear, S.L.A. Marshall wrote that he wasn't surprised at Hemingway's (a recently converted Catholic) original decision to be neutral, but he was astonished when Ernest changed his mind and went to Spain and wrote as 'a passionate crusader for the Loyalist side, blind to its increasingly red discoloration and uncompromising ugliness.'" ~Denis Brian, in The True Gen, p. 106.

[barkingmad33]

"He was not blind to it. But he thought communists were vital to win the war against the fascists. He reluctantly concluded that heir tough, ruthless methods were a necessary evil."

~Denis Brian, The True Gen, p. 106

[barkingmad33]

Archibald MacLeish,(Hemingway friend, combatant-journalist in the Spanish Civil War): "I wrote a piece in the Nation to the same effect, stating my own position that in a good cause, and the Spanish Civil War was a good cause, I didn't give a goddamn whom I was working with. The question was whether you could do anything about the Loyalist cause itself. I wish I'd used Churchill's phrase about welcoming the devil himself as an ally in a righteous cause to defeat your enemy."~The True Gen,p.106

[barkingmad33]

Milton Wolff (The True Gen): "You had to be there to know what had happened. I was there [fighting for the Loyalists with other American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade]. Basically, it was a war waged by the army led by General Franco to reverse the 1936 electionn in which a leftist government of several parties was elected. It was called the Popular Front. Franco brought over Moorish mercenaries, a paid army, to destroy the elected government." ~Milton Wolff in The True Gen, p. 107

[barkingmad33]

"Because the British didn't want a Popular Front government in Spain, any more than they wanted one in France, they brought General Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco. There was a Popular Front government in France too, at the time. They keep saying it wasn't the British government but some British adventurer pilot who flew Franco from the Canary Islands, but if you believe that adventurer-pilot story you believe in Santa Clause." ~Milton Wolff in The True Gen, p.107

[barkingmad33]

"In the very first weeks of the war, long before Moscow decided to help the Spanish government, the Republican or Loyalist side as they were called, Hitler and Mussolini were pouring in stuff to help Franco and the rebels. The Final factor was England putting the arm on France to close the border between France and Spain to cut off military aid to the Republicans. And FDR went along." ~Milton Wolff in The True Gen, p. 107.

[barkingmad33]

Nextren, you are wrong. Read your literary & political history. Hemingway wrote the commentary, Wells is narrating. They were months apart in production. This is pure 30-ish Wells in his classically trained stage voice. Hemingway wasn't crazy about this. Those untrained Americans who left campuses & jobs and bravely went to defend popular democracy in Spain were later hounded by the FBI as "premature anti-fascists" in the late 40s & early 50s under McCarthyism. Get it right, or repeat history.

[toquaan]

I was so glade that this video had been posted, but I was wondering if you would mind also posting it on teachertube (something I recently discovered) since my school blocks youtube and I would like to share it in my english class.

[martynhanson]

You can't understand this film without knowing about the Spanish civil war and all the implications that came from it - for the rest of the world , I mean. Our 'communist propaganda' friend needs to buck up on his history. These were the days when people believed in something and not just 'how much credit can I get' to buy things I don't really need but want very, very badly.

[stevevandien]

@martynhanson Early in the war, Ernest Hemingway wrote to his friend Harry Sylvester that "The Spanish war is a bad war . . . and nobody is right." Hemingway of course supported the Loyalist cause early on. Ultimately, however, he criticized the Communist domination of the Loyalists as much as the Fascist Nationalists. He concluded (quite correctly, in my view) that neither side had the Spanish people's best interests at heart --

[NGS712]

So the person narrating is supposed to be Hemingway? He doesn't sound like I thought he would.

[NGS712]

Brek: I didn't mean it that way, just has more of an accent than I expected. Kinda sounds like he's talkin' through the nose a little.

[nextren]

Communist propaganda. Typical claptrap from the flim-flam 1930s.

Incidentally, Orson Welles originally narrated this movie, but Hemingway yelled at him and replaced the track with his own voice.

[kiswahili]

Don't say bullshits

[rwethi1]

"Communist propanda"? You don't know what you are talking about. Please finally learn from history - especially the Spanish Civil War and its backgrounds - and stop using the typical U.S.-American attitude of "knowing everything better than the rest of the world" (the way your present president does!)

[ramberghini]

we don't all act like that, we do have a communist party in America as well as marxist such as myself. Although we do have a greater percentage of idiots than most countries.

[fionaskene]

BRAVA. SALUD AMIGO! Last week they smashed the memorial

to the brave International Brigaders who lost their lives at the

Ebro : we will retrurn & return to keep their memory alive......

No passeran!

[popeseyes]

been waiting years to see this..

[goby999]

Me too!