Supported by prominent American literary figures like Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos Joris Ivens' "The Spanish Earth" is an interesting glimpse at Spain during one of its most turbulent eras. Narrated by Orson Welles (and later by Hemingway) the documentary shows rural and urban Spanish life in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. With striking scenes of the bare and wide land the film highlights people working and interacting and the trials and tragedies they had to go through all vividly showing a nation in turmoil as they try to get by in tumultuous times. Slow-going and lacking the pizazz that films of this kind should have the importance of this historical artifact nonetheless overrides whatever shortcomings the movie has. A visual time travel to one of the most momentuous and tragic periods in world history "The Spanish Earth" is priceless as it is important.
Review of The Spanish Earth
