Spanish Bombs Cinema. By Ed Rampell
The New York International Independent Film & Video Festival is screening works by emerging and established indie filmmakers and videomakers in L.A. from July 30-Aug. 6. This film and video festival may be rough around the edges compared to AFI, LAFF and some of L.A.’s other glitzier, more homespun festivals, but it does present some worthwhile work in a variety of genres from many nations that Angelenos may otherwise not be able to take a peek at.
A case in point is Catalonian director Oriol Porta’s stellar documentary, A War in Hollywood, that chronicles Tinseltown’s first cause celeb, the Spanish Civil War, which ended 70 years ago this year. The movie colony rallied to this anti-fascist “crusade,” holding star-studded fundraisers to purchase and transport ambulances to Spain’s beleaguered Loyalists, and more importantly making features and documentaries during and after the struggle against Generalissimo Francesco Franco (in the immortal words of Chevy Chase, he’s “still dead!”), who overthrew the democratically elected Spanish Republic in 1936 and was backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Indeed, one of the doc’s interview subjects is contemporary activist actress Susan Sarandon, who proves that Hollywood’s romance with these issues persists seven decades later.
Much of this documentary is told through the eyes and words of the only American screenwriter who fought for democracy in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Alvah Bessie, who wrote two books about his eyewitness experiences there and went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Story for the 1945 Errol Flynn WWII actioner, Objective, Burma! In 1947 Bessie became one of the Hollywood Ten, and his 1930s exploits as a “premature anti-fascist” helped to get him blacklisted, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.
Bessie’s fellow screenwriters, Walter Bernstein and Arthur Laurents – who both had brushes with the Hollywood Blacklist -- are interviewed in A War in Hollywood, which artfully cross-cuts between archival footage, original mostly talking head material and various movies, including clips from Bernstein’s 1976 anti-blacklist dramedy, The Front, starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. In it, the House Un-American Activities Committee inquisitors persecute Mostel’s character, Hecky, for having signed a petition in favor of Spain’s Republicans. (Bernstein also wrote the 1988 blacklist drama, The House on Carroll Street.)
There are scenes from Laurents’ beloved 1973 romance, The Way We Were, with Barbra Streisand playing a young idealistic communist in the1930s, who makes an impassioned anti-Franco speech at a college campus, noting how the Soviet Union is the only nation coming to the aid of democratic Spain.
Scenes from the first Hollywood feature about the Spanish Civil War – John Howard Lawson’s stirring 1938 film, Blockade – starring Henry Fonda as Marco, an anti-Franco partisan are shown. In it, Soviet cargo ships try to run a Franco embargo in order to save starving Spaniards. In A War in Hollywood Marco is seen scrambling for cover during a fascist bombardment (which calls to mind the aerial bombing of Guernica), and in the grand finale he looks straight into the camera, demanding to know, “Where is the conscience of the world?” In her autobiography Jane Fonda wrote how her father’s films, such as Blockade, affected her and forged her political consciousness.
Another film released while the struggle against Franco was still taking place is Joris Ivens’ This Spanish Earth, a classic 1937 documentary narrated by Ernest Hemingway, who co-wrote the doc with John Dos Passos and Lillian Hellman. There are great clips from that doc, and also archival footage of Papa Hemingway in Spain, in Porta’s picture. Scenes from Hollywood’s 1943 adaptation of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls also appear in A War in Hollywood, and it’s interesting to note that veterans of the International Brigades, including Bessie and Moe Fishman (who is repeatedly interviewed onscreen) denounced the novel and film version.
In addition, Franco’s censorial reach extended beyond Espana’s borders, as Hollywood studios sought access to the Spanish market. Henry King’s 1952 screen adaptation of Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, starring Gregory Peck, is also criticized for the insertion of a flashback to a Spanish Civil War battle that depicts the Republicans in a negative light. However Peck, the archetypal La-La-Land liberal, “redeemed” himself in 1964’s decidedly anti-fascist film, Behold a Pale Horse, which pits Peck against Anthony Quinn’s pro-Franco commandante.
Alvah Bessie’s son, Dan Bessie, is also one of the interview subjects in A War in Hollywood, and he will be at the 10:15 p.m., Aug. 6 screening of the documentary.
Through Aug. 6 the NYIIFVF screenings are at the Regency Fairfax Theatre at 7907 Beverly Blvd. For more info visit www.nyfilmvideo.com.
