SPANISH EARTH THE: An original typescript of the narrative to the documentary film The Spanish Earth (1937), eight pages (including a title page with credits), 4to, n.p., n.d. (1936/37), with numerous holograph corrections and directions, most of which are likely to be in the hand of the film's director, Joris Ivens. The text states, in part, '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 would yield much for 50 years we have 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 Fuenteduena……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…..This is the true face of men going into action. It is a little different from any other face that you will ever see…..When you are fighting to defend your country, war as it lasts becomes an almost normal life. You eat and drink, sleep and read the papers……When these men started for the lines three months ago many of them held a rifle for the first time. Some didn't even know how to reload. Now they are instructing the new recruits how to take down and to reassemble a rifle……The bearded man is Commander Martinez de Aragon. Before the war he was a lawyer. He was a brave and skillful (sic) commander and he died in the attack on the Casa del Campo on the day we filmed the battle there…….The clenched fists of Republican Spain. Enrique Lister, a stonemason from Galicia. In six months of fighting he rose from a simple soldier to the command of a division. He is one of the most brilliant young soldiers of the Republican Army……He talks of the army of the people, how they are fighting for Spanish democracy and for the government they themselves have chosen……It is a nation disciplined and brave. It is a new nation forged in the discipline of its soldiers and the enduring bravery of its women…..Living in the cellars of that ruined building are the enemies. They are Moors and civil guards…..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…..Death comes each morning to these people of the town……The smell of death is acrid high-explosive smoke and blasting granite. Why do they stay? They stay because this is their city. These are their homes. Here is their work. This is their fight. They fight to be allowed to live as human beings……Before, death came when you were old or sick, but now it comes to all this village. High in the sky and in shining silver it comes to all who have no place to run, no place to hide…..' . Together with six unsigned 10 x 8 photographs and slightly smaller, most with annotations etc. by Joris Ivens to the versos, all relating to The Spanish Earth and including images of Ivens and Hemingway in a trench, Ivens and Hemingway accompanied by Luise Rainer and Joan Crawford, ruined buildings and burnt-out cars captured during the filming of The Spanish Earth etc. Some overall age wear, creasing and small tears to the edges of the pages etc., generally G, 7

 

The anti-fascist documentary film The Spanish Earth (1937) was directed by Joris Ivens during the Spanish Civil War and made in support of the democratically elected Republicans. The film's narrative was written by Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos and originally narrated by Orson Welles and re-recorded by Hemingway (with Jean Renoir providing the narration for the French release of the film). President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Ivens and Hemingway to show the film at the White House on 8^th July 1937 ahead of its premiere