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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Project - Images of the Spanish Civil War in American Cinema: 1936-1939
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Projects & Abstracts
2005-10-01
2023-09-21
2005-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Sonia Garcìa Lòpez
2005/10/01
Universitat de València
2036-461X
7
en
Ph.D. Thesis Project - Images of the Spanish Civil War in American Cinema: 1936-1939
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/21131/18759
5
  IMAGES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN AMERICANO CINEMA:
  1936-1939
       Sonia Garcia López / Fh.D. Thesis Project
            Universitat de Valencia




      This dissertation is a mart of the search pried "Presenaiss
 noricamericano / Spanish presences in leerican cinema. fin
 de Ciencia y Tenología de Verana ASpanicho mini: so de scienic:
 which is, in turn, the Spanish contrihution to the European de!l's!
projcat, "Tilm Studics Program Europe Hollywood. The Futegsin: 19 St:.
 Cincma". This macro proice based on la saiion dear
 studics the influences and contrihutions of "Old World" co;
 production from the invention of the medium until endar. It
 biographical data about film rrofessionals who migrated to to
 directors, writers, tcchnicians...) and the representation of Fur
 acters, myths, types, landscapes...) in Hollywood studio file
     The Spanish civil conflict was the first war in which the I
  filmmakers captured images in the front lines. In audition
  in as much as imares of cisilian rain circulated internati.
  ing, as a consequence, a prest impact has did not have de
  point in time.
     Undoubtedly. the camera'smechanicalaporaturi:a
  that often escape the human eve. Moreover the doin
 epistemological status as an indexical record of the rod
 in relation to the use of cinema as propaganda that we
 more. this ruthless war was happening in s furorean de
 the press and cinematic images distributed daily, and was pete:
 worldwide conflict the neighboring demoisatio stares were       hose!

    In this sense, the social impact ofthe Spanishcivil warparamo
a great deal of international solidarity from countries such  as Ces:
                                                           france.
the majority of Latin America. In the U'nited States,       the civilian miser.
non intervention official policy of the state) was remarkable, and functionedaisy
erful point of reference that bound cuhesively a series ulemerica                 political moveme?
that had come to existence in the first years of the sages.
  Multiple stories that, one way or another, msthologized, and, coresuently.
imized a varicty of political practices around the significance    of the scle and the in:
national solidarity in relation to the República have                            caste
                                                                became an esential
Spanish civil war as a discursive construct within the l'aited Store. More than
struggle to support a social and political cause. sharmaatstatemathosco!!at
series of US. sembols and national salves.
 From this angle, my dissertation attempts to analyze images af the

95s
                                          IMAGES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN CINEMA


 in U.S. filmmaking. Cinema, as a mass media, is particularly suitable for my object of
 study for two reasons. On the one hand, it is the very medium in which the 19305
 milieu's modes of representation and social problematics crystallize. In this respect, I
 have not chosen the list of films that compose my object of study following aesthetic
 criteria. Instead, each of them reveals a specific set of key issues in relation to the socio
 cultural discourses at work in this time period. My goal is to reconstruct the "epoch's
eye" (following Baxandall's term) and trace a series of connections between these films
and the tradition from which they spring in order to understand the historical condi-
tions that enabled their emergence in U.S. society. I will address the use of images in
relation to a series of diverse processes of historical reflection: the embedded contradic-
tions of the documentary film, the possibility of using images as documents and, final
ly, the close relationship between cinema and history.
 On the other hand, cinema, as a discursive apparatus (that produces stories), is
endowed with a significant capability to create cultural models in as much as it feeds
diverse communities of spectators with a series of stereotypes, cultural prejudices and
representations. From this point of view, it is important to study the ways in which cin
ema produces meaning, and, ultimately, the variety of manners in which these repre-
sentations intervene in the social field.
  I take as a point of departure the understanding of films as cultural objects (analyzing
the production history of each of them). In addition, I will pay close attention to their
formal characteristics, and, from these detailed studies, I will attempt to reach a con-
clusion that sums up all my historical, cultural and cinematic analyses.
  I have organized the study of films in two sections, one dealing with New York pro
duced films and the other with Hollywood. These distinction is based on the fact that,
as it is known, each of these industries works with different criteria, marking their
films with a characteristic imprint, whether they are independent features or not.
  Thus, the first part of my work deals with the study of images of the Spanish civil war
in New York-based filmmaking. I will pay close attention to films such as Spain in
Flames (Helen Van Dongen, 1937), Heart of Spain (Herbert Kline, 1937) and Return to
Life (Henri-Cartier Bresson, 1938) as long as to other independent documentaries about
the war in Spain.
   For my purposes, it is fundamental to address the formation of a public sphere in rela-
tion to the war and the political debate regarding the U.S. non-intervention policy in
order to analyze the films from the perspective I have outlined above. Consequently, I
will emphasize the role of writers and journalists that took part in the Spanish war as a
way to trace their influence in the creation of this political forum within the United
States. The Francoist repression in Badajo, the Gernika tragedy or the systematic
Madrid bombings from the very beginning of the war are key events that deserve close
examination.
  Likewise, I intend to consider the work of graphic journalists such as Robert Capa,
David Seymour or Henri Cartier-Bresson in terms of the dissemination of images of the
war and their relationship with the cinematic ones. Then I will proceed to scrutinize
the ways in which these images became an emblem for the Spanish civil war, con-
tributing to the myth making that surrounds it throughout the 1930s and nowadays.
   Through a close analysis of The Spanish Earth (Joris Ivens, 1937), I will demonstrate
the issues outlined in this first section. I will study its production history and its circu-
lation as well as the different mechanisms of symbolization at work in the film.
                                                                                          165
 SONIA GARCÍA LOPEZ



  The second half of my dissertation focuses on Hollywood produced fi
with the Spanish civil war. I will analyze Last Train from Madrid (James Hogan, 1937
Love under fire (George Marshall, 1937), and also Blockade (William Dieterle, 1938), a
film independently produced by Walter Wanger.
   The detailed study of the latter film will allow me to address the politicization of the
 film world in the beginning of the Igos as a direct consequence of the Great
Depression, the arrival to Hollywood of European émigrés fleeing Fascism and Nazism,
 and the partial migration of the New York intellectual class - Dorothy Parker, Lilian
Hellman, Dashiell Hammett or Ernest Hemingway - to work in Hollywood motion
 ture business.
    Through the study of The Spanish Earth and Blockade, I will try to identify a series of
 elements that allowed the discursive construction of Spain and the Spanish people in
 the United States during the New Deal. Ultimately, I would like to trace the nature of
 the discursive practices that exist between a country in war that has been constructed
as a secular space for myth-making and legend for U.S. intellectuals and travelers and
 later the mass media, and a nation living a historical time in crisis, such as the United
 States in the era of the Great Depression, which was in the midst of re-negotiating its
 own identity as a country.




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