Ernest Hemingway: The Spanish Earth (1937) 

Thank you very much for uploading this document. Watching it has been very emotive for me. I've grown hearing tales of the lost war from my grandfather,who have had a harsh but happy life and of whom I am proud.

The importance of the film outweighs the flaws and much credit to Hemingway, Ivens and all involved in creating this time travel to the country during one of its most fascinating and darkest times.

This Spanish earth is dry and hard. And the faces of the men who work that earth are hard and dry from the sun. This worthless land with water will yield much. For fifty years we wanted to irrigate but they held us back. Now we will bring water to it to raise food for the defenders of Madrid. The village of Fuentedue?a, where fifteen hundred people live and work the land for the common good. It is good bread stamped with the Union label. But there is only enough for the village. Irrigating the waste land of the village can give ten times as much grain for bread, as well as potatoes, wine and onions for Madrid. The village is on the Tajo river and the main highroad that is the life line between Valencia and Madrid. All food for Madrid comes on this road. To win the war the rebel troops must cut this road. They plan the irrigation of the dry fields. They go to trace the ditch. This is the true face of men going into action. It is a little different from any other face that you will ever see. Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death. The villagers in Fuentedue?a hear this noise and say... "our guns". The frontline curves north to Madrid. These were the doors of houses that are empty now. Those who survived the bombardment bring them to reinforce the new trenches. When you are fighting to defend your country, war, as it lasts, becomes an almost-normal life. You eat, and drink, and sleep, and read the papers. The loudspeaker of the People's Army. It has a range of two kilometers. When these men started for the lines three months ago, many of them held a rifle for the first time. Some did not even know how to reload. Now they are instructing the new recruits how to take down and reassemble a rifle. This is the salient driven into Madrid itself when the enemy took the University City. After repeated counter-attacks they are still in the "Casa de Vel?zquez", the palace on the left with the pointed towers, and in the ruined Clinical Hospital. The bearded man is Commander Mart?nez de Arag?n. Before the war he was a lawyer. He was a brave and skillful commander, and he died in the attack on the "Casa del Campo" on the day we filmed the battle there. The rebels try to relieve the Clinic. Juli?n, a boy from the village, writes home: "Papa, I will be there in three days. Tell our mother". The troops are called together. The company is assembled to elect representatives to attend the big meeting for celebrating the union of all the militia regiments into the new brigades of the People's Army. Enrique "Lister", a stonemason from Galicia. In six months of fighting he rose from a simple soldier to the command of a division. He's one of the most brilliant young soldiers of the Republican Army. Carlos, one of the first commanders of the Fifth Regiment. He talks of the Army of the People. How they are fighting for Spanish democracy and for the Government they themselves have chosen. Fighting together we shall win a new strong Spain. Jos? D?az, he used to work twelve hours a day as a typesetter before he became a member of the Spanish Parliament. Gustav Regler, one of the fine writers of Germany, who came to Spain to fight for his ideals. He was gravely wounded in June. Regler praises the unity of the People's Army. The defense of Madrid will remind men always of their loyalty and courage. The most famous woman in Spain today is speaking. They call her "La Pasionaria". She is not a romantic beauty, nor any Carmen. She's the wife of a poor miner of Asturias. But all the character of the new Spanish woman is in the voice. "Comrades of the 12th Flag," "Jos? Leiva speaking. Do you know me? I'm among my brothers of The People's Army..." "...where I've been given an excellent treatment". "Here you can't see the beastly treatment we are given in those lines". Living in the cellars of that ruined building are the enemy. They are Moors and Civil Guards. They are brave troops or they would not have held out after their position is hopeless. But they are professional soldiers fighting against the people in arms, trying to impose the will of the military on the will of the people, and the people hate them, for without their tenacity and the constant aid of Italy and Germany, the Spanish revolt would have ended six weeks after it began. This battalion goes on leave, and Juli?n, who is with them, has three days leave to the village. The Duke of Alba's Palace is destroyed by rebel bombardment. Treasures of Spanish art are carefully salvaged by government militiamen. Madrid, by its position, is a natural fortress, and each day the people make its defences more impregnable. You stand in line all day to buy food for supper. Sometimes the food runs out before you reach the door. Sometimes a shell falls near the line and at home they wait and wait, and no one brings back anything for supper. Unable to enter the town, the enemy try to destroy it. This is a man who had nothing to do with war. A book-keeper on his way to his office at eight o'clock in the morning. So now they take the book-keeper away. But not to his office or to his home. The Government urges all civilians to evacuate Madrid. But "where will we go?" "Where can we live?" "What can we do for a living?" "I won't go. I'm too old". But we must keep the children off the street, except when there is need to stand in line. Recruiting is speeded up by the bombardment. Every useless killing angers the people. Men from all businesses, professions and trades enlist in the Republican Army. Meanwhile, in Valencia, the President... Juli?n catches a ride on an empty truck and comes home sooner than he expected. Juli?n drills the village boys in the evening, when they come back from the fields. In Madrid, a future shock battalion of bullfighters, football players and athletes is drilling. They say the old goodbyes that sound the same in any language. She says she'll wait. He says that he'll come back. He knows she'll wait. Who knows for what the way the shelling is. Nobody knows if he comes back. "Take care of the kid", he says. "I will", she says and knows she can't. They both know that when they move you out in trucks, it's to a battle. Death comes each morning to these people of the town, sent from the hills two miles away. The smell of death is acrid high-explosive smoke and blasted granite. Why do they stay? They stay because this is their city. These are their homes. Here is their work. This is their fight. The fight to be allowed to live as human beings. Boys look for bits of shell fragment as they once gathered hill stones. So the next shell finds them. The German artillery has increased their allowance for battery today. Before, death came when you were old or sick, but now it comes to all this village. High in the sky and shining silver it comes to all who have no place to run, no place to hide. Three "Junkers" planes did this. The Government pursuit-planes shot one "Junkers" down. I can't read German either. These dead came from another country. They signed to work in Ethiopia, the prisoners said. We took no statements from the dead but all the letters we read were very sad. The Italians lost more killed, wounded and missing in this single battle of Brihuega than in all the Ethiopian war. The rebels attack the Madrid-Valencia road again. They've crossed the Jarama river and try to take the Arganda bridge. Troops are rushed from the North to the counter-attack. The village works to bring the water. They arrive at the Valencia road. The infantry in the assault, where cameras need much luck to go. The slow, heavy-laden, undramatic movement forward. The men in echelon, in columns of six. In the ultimate loneliness of what is known as contact, where each man knows there is only himself and five other men, and before them all the great unknown. This is the moment that all the rest of war prepares for, when six men go forward into death to walk across a stretch of land and by their presence on it prove "THIS EARTH IS OURS". The counter-attack has been successful. The road is free. Six men were five. Then four were three. But these three stayed, dug in and held the ground, along with all the other fours and threes and twos that started out as sixes. The bridge is ours,... the road is saved. The men who never fought before, who were not trained in arms, who only wanted work and food, fight on... Subtitles by: OZY (2006)

thank you for uploading this docu. been looking for it since forever!

Having just finished Hugh Thomas thousand page history of the Spanish civil war, this film is a great glimpse into the republican mindset. What a misunderstood and misrepresented war!

What I notice from this film is how other-worldly this country was backen then. The buildings are vaguely recognisable but the men ride donkeys like timeless, rural Africans and the women sweep dirt streets with bent backs because their brooms do not even have such a thing as a simple long handle. Their faces generally show hardship - something that has retuned herwith the “crisis,” while skinny dogs scuttle around. Later, we see teams of men working in the country wide hand-held hoes and when a man speaks on the telephone it is surprising because the mental atmosphere of the film could have been almost medieval. The war scenes reinforce how empty war always is. The attempts to glorify it with stirring music are hollow only partly because we know that the end result is a stifling dictatorship, four decades long. In Madrid, ragged children play in the street and in the next frame a man hurredly carries a seemingly emptycoffin over one shoulder. Food cues (for some people this is a reality again today) crowd next to destroyed buildings and a single corpse lying in the gutter. (We are told the body is that of a book-keeper on his way to work at eight in the morning.) After more battle scenes and shots of noble-peasant types the film, now clearly a piece of prop, ends with a man's voice singing a very moving a capella song, ruined somewhat by Hemmingway's voice-over.

I've finished reading 'For whom the bell tolls' yesterday, saw this film on a wiki page and by a coincidence found it in my youtube feed. thank you the internet!) --- It's really interesting that this film has rather different atmosphere, comparing it to the book.

this really is fascinating, thankyou, i could listen to him narrate all day

Thank you. This is excellent!

thank you so much !

Such an authentic documentary. Need to submit an assignment by tonight on Spanish Earth. Watched it but still I have no clue about what to write!

The film was made by Joris Ivens!

The true story of Orson Welles and Hemingway you can get a glimpse of here - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NyTi9v9QPxE.html. Orson was supposed to narrate this but Hemingway did not like what he was doing and parted ways on the film at first meeting. But they did subsequently have a friendship. But the story is hilarious, also an insight into Hemingway's personality that is little spoken about.

Finally. I only ever heard Orson Welles' narration for it.

I think it was Martha Gellhorn who correctly observed that the Spanish Civil War was a "dress rehearsal" for what later became known as WWII. This documentary film is also referenced, with a few outtakes involving wrangling over scripting, narration and editing between Hemingway, Welles and Dos Passos in the 2012 movie "Hemingway & Gellhorn." (Which might have well been titled "Hemingway vs. Gellhorn").

Much about the filming of this movie is included in the book "Hotel Flordia" by Amanda Vaill.

Hi. I´d like to know if I can take a couple of minutes of this video to show in my tv program. thanks. I mean about copyrights and things like that.

The "scenes of rural life" are authentic in essence - I lived in Andalucia in 1960-62 and life hadn't changed much - but the incredible sequence of the women sweeping their village street was obviously staged by the photographer (go to 2.50 seconds in the film). The woman in the background was clearly instructed to sweep her way across the street in unison with the one in the foreground, the first like a miniature of the second, to accentuate the monotony and misery of the villages.

for lots of great background on this, read 'hotel florida' by amanda vaill

Great film! I love Hemingway, but somehow I imagined a deeper tone to his voice.

Thanks for this. It's so much better than the old copy I have. You can hear the voice of "Pappa" clearly on this version. I also have the Orson Welles version, but it's nothing like hearing the flat, midwestern voice of Hemingway itself.

I wonder what my grandfather would've said if he watched this. He was there before coming to Argentina.

thank you

Kiitos

Is this the original soundtrack of the film? It is very strange, why all the music are Sardanes (catalan traditional music) and even "Segadors" the catalan Hymn?

"Up here in Aargon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it." George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia. "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists." George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia. Ⓐ.

Thank you -- sincerely appreciate the upload. Wish Mr. Hemingway addressed the roles of both the Soviet Union which supplied military aid to the Republic and the Catholic Church which became an enemy of the Republic... RIP to all who perished during this horrible war.

fascinating documentary

The NHS has worked extremely well for decades and most people in the UK support it. Things are much better for low income earners in Australia than in the US however you look at it. Working class people in the UK are more likely to support the NHS than anyone else as they are less likely to have private insurance.

Brilliant!

Anyone know the name of the song around the 2:50 mark ?

Nunca había visto la guerra civil española tan cruda como esta...SOLO PIDO A DIOS QUE NO VUELVA A PASAR NUNCA...

Can you cite your documentation for that? I'd enjoy looking it up.

Good document. Bravo.

Amazing

Watching this for class

Si, asín es amigo.

i have no idea about the war. It's just historical and awesome

Hemingway sounds like John C. Reilly lol

WOW

directed by Joris Ivens

End Part 1 7:55 End Part 2 17:48 End Part 3 24:39 End Part 4 34:18 End Part 5 42:52

por cierto, atentos al soldado del 17:24 , tan lejano ese gesto y tan cercano al mismo tiempo...

I have read all his books. he was antifacist..not communist - it is in THAT book

The Spanish Civil War is a reminder that sometimes both sides are bad. Sometimes, it's just team diablos vs team demonios. The one that wins will always be the worst, no matter which one wins.

I do not care about these analytics...I love him anyway :)

I live in Australia and spent my youth in NZ we are SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC..free enterprise and freedom of thought, emphasis on HUMAN rights and freedom of expression..we are also among the wealthiest and most free nations on earth....the balance between the rights of the individual and the inclusiveness of the economy is an imperative along with protections for the poor with free education and a safety net..but most of all FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION and FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. You are WRONG.

why does it play the Catalan national anthem while talking about Madrid?

Interesting film. But this film is not narrated by Hemingway. I have a record of him talking and this is not him Once he heard his voice recorded he never wanted to talk where he was recorded. He had a high voice and not at all comfortable reading. So apparently the film has been dubbed by some other voice. This revelation has nothing to do with the film as an historical document. Still a wonderful film.

Please, exist sub? Sub spanish

19.00 hes a russian speaking spanish! his accent is very thick! this is not a spanish republican military it was a russian agent!

oh and lest we forget there was an opportunity in 1981...NO ONE from the KING down to the lowest supported this attempt ..in fact both ARMY and DEMOCRATIC reps held firm against the thugs...So I guess your wrong then hey.

I finally got a chance to watch The Spanish Earth in its entirety. An interesting view. A lot of video that is very well done, especially when considering it is pre-WW2 work. The narration-yes, I know it is Hemingway- is the worst documentary narration I have ever heard in any documentary I have ever watched. Brief comments, explaining nothing or giving some background. It's incredible. I came close to just stopping watching it but I might never watch it again and I thought the narration would improve. To put that much effort into capturing so much video of the Spanish Civil War and then having narration that poor is hard to believe. Oh, the same exact machine gun noise through the entire film is pathetic even for a 1937 work.

They shall not pass

You have a strange system of equations to please yourself: "Nazis and Fsacists are atheists. How do we know that? Atheists and Nazis and Fascists are bad, so they must all be the same thing. However, we sympathize with Franco,because he was religious, so he couldn't have been Fascist, because Fascists are bad, and we sympathize with Franco." Listen up: Franco was a Fascist. And he was bad.The Fascists were in bed with the Church; it was heavily, filthily implicated. And they were BAD. Got it?

¡Viva la Unión General de Trabajadores!

3:55 spanish rush hour traffic.....

he was not communist!!!

Los españoles trabajando en el campo con las camisas blancas y limpias.😁🇪🇸🙅

oh deary me ...the republic was in truth a democratic organ consisting of various groups INCLUDING communists politically it was more Social Democrat but due to the lack of material support from the great democracies was left to rely on STALINS supplies and the communists...remember the non communists were attacked by the communists in Catalonia..in short STALIN destroyed the revolution..the democracies regretted this action but nevertheless just like POLAND communism and fascism reigned supreme

And the people back then were not impressed

Using, or knowing the meaning of the word "dialectic" doesn't make a man a red. Especially not in those times when many people were reading Marx and Engel and other theorists. And, in his letters, Hemingway expresses how he really felt about the Russians in the Spanish war. The Republic should have won that war. It might have gone some way toward preventing WW II. Nothing justifies Franco.

Hemingway's narration and comments are sparse and cold, matter of fact, distant

you now have a democratic system with a mixed economy and democracy and SPAIN in seen as a modern country and a player in world democracy , a member of the EU and respected throughout the world. I would have thought by now that the unreconstructed fascist in SPAIN would have worked out by now that it is THEY who were and are the danger to Spain and its free society..Freedom for all...not just the few.

Pas sous titrage ni version française

Viva Espanha Viva El rei viva franco vida longa ao rei

It was a propaganda film made by a Dutchman who worked for the Russians. The sound was dubbed in. Hemingway was played for a sucker by the Russians.

LC

He was a red to the bone

It's interesting to note that many peasants welcomed the Nationalists, because they didn't confiscate their land, and guaranteed a fair price for their crops. In the Republican areas, however, farms were collectivized, and crops distributed, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." -- Kark Marx

Today, in 2022, the World Economic Forum is taking land from Dutch farmers.

FDR refused to support the Republic or the Lincoln Brigade volunteers fighting against the Italian, German and Spanish Fascists. Shameful.

el himno de riego con dos pelotas larga vida a la replublica y gloria a las brigadas internacionales viva la republicaaaaaa

aha, yes, Spain was so lucky about have a guy like Franco... Ask catalan and euskal population about it, or simply ask the republican people, who lost the war... All ways of dictatorships are bad for the population, doesnt matter right or left handed ones. Dictatorships are only good if you are the dictator.

Interesting that Lister and La Passionaria were not identified as Communists. They were praised as heroes, but their communism was left out the film.

Long live the anarchy.

Ni se si la banda sonora que se ha puesto en esta versión es la original o no, pero me parece repugnante que los campesinos de Fuentidueña se acompañen de música popular catalana , siempre estos listos apropiándose de la historia.

Republican in Spain had a way different meaning than Eisenhower Republican. I'm no fan of fascism, but Hemingway was a great writer full of much crap.

Yes and Proffessionals in the UK make better money than those in the US because the UK is not dominated by conservative corporations who only care about there own profits. The reason the UK is a good place to live is because it has things like the NHS which is about as Socialist as it gets!! A Labourer in the UK or Australia can make four times what they would in the US!! SERIOUSLY, GROW UP AND READ A BOOK BOY !!

Ernest Commieway…

Same race of dogs fighting each other..

pretty awful little film....you can see hemingway's style all over it....long on donkey shots and walking peasants and very short on analysis....the spanish republicans wanted a communist revolution in spain and they put a communist/anarchist government in place in barcelona but of course it all fell apart because nobody could agree on what to do next......i doubt that hemingway understood what was going on in the bigger picture although he clearly appreciated that the campesinos were impoverished and needed a better deal....this film was a big missed opportunity but hemingway had other things going on and astute analysis wasn't his strong suit

Then study the USA and the English world...get educated bro

Spain '37 Syria '17

Pobres brigadistas, que desengaño. Que derrota, lo que hacen los ideales infundados . Que descansen en paz en la católica España.😌🇪🇸🙅

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

one of my grandfathers fhad to fought to the fascist army (he had no choice) and the other one fought for the republicans. They were friends after the marriage of my parents. Fuck politics.

I always thought all the smiting god did was in the old testament - beefore jesus died for our sins? here's a hypothetical: spanish inquisition. Who do you smite? Also, if the jews and babylonians smite-cancelled themselves out, who was even left to worship god?

New recruits of the peoples army....what Hemmingway is not telling you is that the bolchavics and the americans are on the same team. Same star, just different color.

Nothing good came from Franco? many Spaniards have a far different recollection of the Franco years than you have expressed. especially compared to the "enlightened era" that Spain is now in , a full fledged depression.

NHS in the UK costs billions in taxpayers subsidy. It is not working well. How can you call it a good thing when you need to rob massive sums of money from the working people to keep it going? It's like USSR where everything had to be subsidised untill it collapsed which is what awaits european socialist countries in the near future as well. What labourer earns and where is dependant on many things, and one most important is the cost of living which is huge in australia and low in the US.

Those were the days. Read Dos Passos in high school, quite a revelation, then there was Vietnam. Now we got 7 billion and global capitalism. Soon we'll be out of fossil fuel and 10 bil people, US will collapse under unstoppable Mexican migration and foreign debt. Computer engineers will rule the world. The past always looks better, at least since the 1960's. I hate the world that capitalism has created, and socialism is merely a response to capitalism, not a dissolution of it. Humanity can suck.

Lame

The system you talk about , the - social-democracy is dying as we speak. There is no middle ground, Socialsm is like cancer, if you dont cut it out it will spread , you either have free economy of individuals or you have socialsm. The most succesfull state in the world is USA because they are the most capitalist than any other country in the world. However they move away from it , chosing Obama etc. , they will fall , and I hope it will be a lesson for us all

well they intended to portray the Republican as a democrats but they weren´t democrats, in fact, the Spanish second republic was doomed from the start, the Republic was hijacked by communists, anarchists and socialists in their pursuit to establish a Soviet in Spain, another USSR in Spain, fortunately they failed to achieve it

Look , youre living at the very end of the world. You've got natural resources, no military threat , no wars since a long time. Your people are few , you can play at socialism etc. and you can get along I am sure. But dont tell people who sacrifised hundreds of thousands of best men fighting off the socialist scourge , both nazis and soviets that this is the way to go. You simply live in a different world my friend.

Amazing

thank you