Author Archive: Retro

The majority of this film, c. 1938, concerns the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), made up primarily of battle footage. While there is some good pictures of war and war devistation, the sound track is a bit odd, filled with “Charge Of The Light Brigade” and Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony.” Due to film breaks, the sound of gun fire and music occasionally sputters, stops and starts abruptly. Occasionally, an awkward sounding narrator entones piously about the devistation of war. The film is definately anti-Franco, though he is never named, simply called “the rebels.” The film closes with shots of the Pope in Rome, waving during Mass.

1937 film of the Internationalle’s high-point featuring Earnest Hemingway and Orson Welles.

Camus might have been the truck driver.

The film opens in the village of Fuentidueña de Tajo (called “Fuentedueña” in the movie), showing the villagers trying to scratch a living from the dry soil and explaining the importance of bringing water to irrigate the fields so more crops can be produced and embattled Madrid can be fed. A map shows the position of the village on the Madrid-Valencia road, which must be kept open at all costs so the capital can be defended. The scene moves to Madrid, with another map showing the front line running west of the city, with a rebel salient in the Ciudad Universitaria, which the loyalists are shown attacking.

A documentary showing the struggle of the Spanish Republican government against a rebellion by ultra-right-wing forces led by Gen. Francisco Franco and backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Las Hurdes is one of the most disturbing, and most hilarious, films ever, and was so far ahead of its time that modern flirtations with the absurd and with black comedy pale in comparison. Ostensibly a documentary, it gradually betrays its subversiveness and we understand that it is a manufactured reality. In a memorably cruel moment, a goat tumbles off the side of a steep slope it is climbing after the narrator describes the precariousness of its climb. The puff of smoke that appears in frame just before the goat falls tells us that the goat had some help from the film crew in falling off the cliff. This film is brilliant and depraved and will either have you laughing hysterically or feeling rather upset, or possibly both.

Better known as October and/or Ten Days That Shook the World this Sergei Eisenstein classic re-creates the final days of the Soviet Revolution. While simplistic stereotypical characterizations keep the film from becoming involving on an emotional level, the spectacle and visuals are typically brilliant and complex.

How did the cold war with Russia begin after WWII. What did America do to assist Europe in that time to help Ally Nations resist Russian objectives

Although the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union had brought victory in World War II, wartime cooperation meant glossing over many serious differences between the two. Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Soviet leaders had been claiming that communism and capitalism could never peacefully coexist. Beginning in the 1930s Josef Stalin had tried to reach some sort of understanding with the West, but only because he viewed Nazi Germany as the greater threat. Indeed, after concluding that the West was not interested in working with him, he made his own agreement with Hitler in 1939. That agreement, of course, was quickly forgotten after the German invasion of the Soviet Union two years later.

After the United States entered the war in December 1941 the [...]

A classic documentary in glorious black and white, the film is mostly silent, with a musical score added. There is a sound introduction by Byrd himself and a narrator describes the section showing the actual flight over the South Pole (though his narration is hurried). The film is beautifully photographed and won the Academy Award for cinematography in 1930.