Blockade Reviews

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was so hotly debated in neutral US at the time that Hollywood shunned productions concerning this vital struggle, afraid to alienate either side. Then producer Walter Wanger decided to profile this distant war in which an ill-equipped republic stood up to fascism for the first time. However, Wanger produced a film that was so ambiguous that it is hard to tell where its sympathies really are. Fonda plays a peasant farmer being driven off his land by invading soldiers (wearing uniforms that were purposely designed to represent no specific country). He and his fellow farmers trudge along until Fonda turns and makes an impassioned speech, whereupon he becomes a leader of native troops and quickly earns a promotion, being sent to headquarters in a city under blockade which is probably Barcelona. Here he meets Carroll, a reluctant spy for the other side, gathering information so that her loved ones in occupied territory will not be harmed. Both seek shelter in a building that is bombed and are trapped for hours while diggers work their way to them. Fonda describes in hortatory terms how the citizens of Spain are being bombed, starved, and slaughtered by her side. He convinces her that his side represents a free people, so she works with him to help bring a much-needed supply ship into the harbor. This is achieved when Carroll sends a misleading message to blockading submarines. At the film's end, Fonda addresses the viewer imploringly: "It's murder...murder of innocent people. There's no sense to it. The world can stop it. Where's the conscience of the world?" But the world was not moved by Fonda's speech in BLOCKADE (one of the actor's least favorite movies). The movie did badly at the box office and was banned in many fascist countries and in others supporting the Axis nations. The film obviously leans to the Loyalist side and condemns Franco's takeover (which he achieved mostly with Italian and German troops and weapons). Fonda and his men wear the traditional Basque berets, and civilian clothes, the basic uniform of Loyalists consisting of Democrats, Socialists, Communists, and assorted volunteers from all over the world who made up the International Brigades. (The American volunteers served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.) To many right-wing or conservative Americans, the Loyalists were nothing more than Bolsheviks, and these groups lobbied against the film as did the Catholic Church in America. (France had allied itself with the Catholic Church of Spain. The church was one of the country's largest landowners and had traditionally supported regimes that protected its interests; the church in Spain often operated contrary to the wishes of the Vatican.) Wanger was warned that he faced stiff opposition on BLOCKADE and risked the film being banned abroad. The short-tempered Wanger retorted: "I'm going to release this Spanish picture as is, and if it's banned in Europe, I'll have to take my loss." He did. When scripter Lawson later went before HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee of the witch-hunting McCarthy era), this film was thrown in his face as representative of his leftist tendencies, an ironic charge in that BLOCKADE is so politically obtuse, one wonders what credo Lawson advocated. Lawson earned an Oscar nomination for his original story, and the film also was nominated for Best Cinematography.