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.
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Manuel Azaña
Himself (President of Spain)
José Díaz
Himself (Parliamentarian)
Dolores Ibárruri
Herself
Enrique Lister
Himself (Republican Army)
Commander Martinez de Aragón
Himself (Republican Army)
Gustav Regler
Himself (German writer)
Orson Welles
Narrator (voice)
Ernest Hemingway
Narrator (voice)
Jean Renoir
Narrator (voice)
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