The Spanish Earth (1937) Movie Script
- 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 will yield much.
For fifty years we
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,
where 1,500 people live
and work the land
for the common good.
It is good bread stamped
with the Union label.
But there is only
enough for the village.
Irrigating the waste
land of the village
can give 10 times as
much grain for bread,
as well as potatoes, wine,
and onions for Madrid.
The village is on the Tajo
river and the main highroad
that is the lifeline
between Valencia and Madrid.
All food for Madrid
comes on this road.
To win the war, the rebel
troops must cut this road.
They plan the irrigation
of the dry fields.
They go to trace the ditch.
This is the true face of
men going into action.
It is a little different
from any other face
that you will ever see.
Men cannot act before the
camera in the presence of death.
The villagers in Fuenteduena
hear this noise
and say, our guns.
The frontline curves
north to Madrid.
These were the doors of
houses that are empty now.
Those who survived
the bombardment
bring them to reinforce
the new trenches.
When you are fighting
to defend your country,
war, as it lasts, becomes
an almost-normal life.
You eat, and drink, and
sleep, and read the papers.
The loudspeaker of
the People's Army.
It has a range of
two kilometers.
When these men started for
the lines three months ago,
many of them held a
rifle for the first time.
Some did not even
know how to reload.
Now they are instructing
the new recruits
how to take down and
reassemble a rifle.
This is the salient,
driven into Madrid itself
when the enemy took
University City.
After repeated counter-attacks,
they are still in the
Casa de Velazquez,
the palace on the left
with the pointed towers,
and in the ruined
clinical hospital.
The bearded man is Commander
Martinez de Aragon.
Before the war, he was a lawyer.
He was a brave and
skillful commander,
and he died in the attack
on the Casa del Campo
on the day we filmed
the battle there.
The rebels try to
relieve the clinic.
Julian, a boy from the
village, writes home.
Papa, I will be
there in three days.
Tell our mother.
The troops are called together.
The company is assembled
to elect representatives
to attend the big meeting
celebrating the union of
all the militia regiments
into the new brigades
of the People's Army.
Enrique Lister, a
stonemason from Galicia.
In six months of fighting,
he rose from a simple soldier
to the command of a division.
He's one of the most
brilliant young soldiers
of the Republican Army.
Carlos, one of the
first commanders of
the Fifth Regiment.
He talks of the
Army of the People,
how they are fighting
for Spanish democracy
and for the government they
themselves have chosen.
Fighting together, we shall
win a new strong Spain.
Jose Diaz, he used to work 12
hours a day as a typesetter
before he became a member
of the Spanish Parliament.
Gustav Regler, one of the
fine writers of Germany,
who came to Spain to
fight for his ideals.
He was gravely wounded in June.
Regler praises the unity
of the People's Army.
The defense of Madrid
will remind men always
of their loyalty and courage.
The most famous woman in
Spain today is speaking.
They call her La Pasionaria.
She's not a romantic
beauty or any Carmen.
She's the wife of a
poor miner of Asturias,
but all the character
of the new Spanish woman
is in her voice.
Living in the cellars of that
ruined building are the enemy.
They are Moors and civil guards.
They are brave troops, or
they would not have held out
after their position
is hopeless.
But they are
professional soldiers
fighting against
a 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.
This battalion goes on leave,
and Julian, who is with them,
has three days leave
to the village.
The Duke of Alba's palace is
destroyed by rebel bombardment.
Treasures of Spanish art
are carefully salvaged
by government militia men.
Madrid, by its position,
is a natural fortress,
and each day the people make
its defenses more impregnable.
You stand in line all day
to buy food for supper.
Sometimes the food runs out
before you reach the door.
Sometimes a shell
falls near the line,
and at home they wait and wait,
and no one brings back
anything for supper.
Unable to enter the town,
the enemy try to destroy it.
This is a man who had
nothing to do with war,
a bookkeeper on his
way to his office
at eight o'clock in the morning.
So now they take
the bookkeeper away,
but not to his office
or to his home.
The government urges all
civilians to evacuate Madrid.
But where will we go?
Where can we live?
What can we do for a living?
I won't go, I'm too old.
But we must keep the
children off the street,
except when there is a
need to stand in line.
Recruiting is speeded
up by the bombardment.
Every useless killing
angers the people.
Men from all businesses,
professions, and trades
enlist in the Republican Army.
Meanwhile, in Valencia,
the President.
- Julian catches
a ride on an empty truck
and comes home sooner
than he expected.
Julian drills the village
boys in the evening,
when they come back
from the fields.
In Madrid, a future
shock battalion
of bullfighters,
football players, and
athletes is drilling.
They say the old goodbyes
that sound the same
in any language.
She says she'll wait.
He says that he'll come back.
He knows she'll wait.
Who knows for what, the
way the shelling is.
Nobody knows if he comes back.
"Take care of the kid," he says.
"I will," she says,
and knows she can't.
They both know that when
they move you out in trucks,
it's to a battle.
Death comes each morning to
these people of the town,
sent from the hills
two miles away.
The smell of death is acrid,
high-explosive smoke
and blasted granite.
Why do they stay?
They stay because
this is their city.
These are their homes.
Here is their work.
This is their fight,
the fight to be allowed
to live as human beings.
Boys look for bits
of shell fragment
as they once
gathered hailstones.
So the next shell finds them.
The German artillery has
increased their allowance
for battery today.
Before, death came when
you were old or sick,
but now it comes to
all this village.
High in the sky
and shining silver,
it comes to all who have no
place to run, no place to hide.
Three Junkers planes did this.
The government pursuit-planes
shot one Junkers down.
I can't read German, either.
These dead came from
another country.
They signed to work in
Ethiopia, the prisoners said.
We took no statements
from the dead,
but all the letters
we read were very sad.
The Italians lost more
killed, wounded, and missing
in this single
battle of Brihuega
than in all the Ethiopian war.
The rebels attack the
Madrid-Valencia road again.
They've crossed the Jarama river
and try to take
the Arganda bridge.
Troops are rushed from the
north to the counter-attack.
The village works
to bring the water.
They arrive at
the Valencia road.
The infantry in the assault,
where cameras need
much luck to go.
The slow, heavy-laden,
undramatic movement forward.
The men in echelon,
in columns of six,
in the ultimate loneliness
of what is known as contact,
where each man knows
there is only himself
and five other men, and before
him, all the great unknown.
This is the moment that all
the rest of war prepares for,
when six men go
forward into death
to walk across a stretch of land
and, by their presence on
it, prove this earth is ours.
The counter-attack
has been successful.
The road is free.
Six men were five,
then four were three.
But these three stayed,
dug in and held the ground,
along with all the other
fours and threes and twos
that started out as sixes.
The bridge is ours.
The road is saved.
The men who never fought before,
who were not trained in arms,
who only wanted work
and food, fight on.
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 will yield much.
For fifty years we
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,
where 1,500 people live
and work the land
for the common good.
It is good bread stamped
with the Union label.
But there is only
enough for the village.
Irrigating the waste
land of the village
can give 10 times as
much grain for bread,
as well as potatoes, wine,
and onions for Madrid.
The village is on the Tajo
river and the main highroad
that is the lifeline
between Valencia and Madrid.
All food for Madrid
comes on this road.
To win the war, the rebel
troops must cut this road.
They plan the irrigation
of the dry fields.
They go to trace the ditch.
This is the true face of
men going into action.
It is a little different
from any other face
that you will ever see.
Men cannot act before the
camera in the presence of death.
The villagers in Fuenteduena
hear this noise
and say, our guns.
The frontline curves
north to Madrid.
These were the doors of
houses that are empty now.
Those who survived
the bombardment
bring them to reinforce
the new trenches.
When you are fighting
to defend your country,
war, as it lasts, becomes
an almost-normal life.
You eat, and drink, and
sleep, and read the papers.
The loudspeaker of
the People's Army.
It has a range of
two kilometers.
When these men started for
the lines three months ago,
many of them held a
rifle for the first time.
Some did not even
know how to reload.
Now they are instructing
the new recruits
how to take down and
reassemble a rifle.
This is the salient,
driven into Madrid itself
when the enemy took
University City.
After repeated counter-attacks,
they are still in the
Casa de Velazquez,
the palace on the left
with the pointed towers,
and in the ruined
clinical hospital.
The bearded man is Commander
Martinez de Aragon.
Before the war, he was a lawyer.
He was a brave and
skillful commander,
and he died in the attack
on the Casa del Campo
on the day we filmed
the battle there.
The rebels try to
relieve the clinic.
Julian, a boy from the
village, writes home.
Papa, I will be
there in three days.
Tell our mother.
The troops are called together.
The company is assembled
to elect representatives
to attend the big meeting
celebrating the union of
all the militia regiments
into the new brigades
of the People's Army.
Enrique Lister, a
stonemason from Galicia.
In six months of fighting,
he rose from a simple soldier
to the command of a division.
He's one of the most
brilliant young soldiers
of the Republican Army.
Carlos, one of the
first commanders of
the Fifth Regiment.
He talks of the
Army of the People,
how they are fighting
for Spanish democracy
and for the government they
themselves have chosen.
Fighting together, we shall
win a new strong Spain.
Jose Diaz, he used to work 12
hours a day as a typesetter
before he became a member
of the Spanish Parliament.
Gustav Regler, one of the
fine writers of Germany,
who came to Spain to
fight for his ideals.
He was gravely wounded in June.
Regler praises the unity
of the People's Army.
The defense of Madrid
will remind men always
of their loyalty and courage.
The most famous woman in
Spain today is speaking.
They call her La Pasionaria.
She's not a romantic
beauty or any Carmen.
She's the wife of a
poor miner of Asturias,
but all the character
of the new Spanish woman
is in her voice.
Living in the cellars of that
ruined building are the enemy.
They are Moors and civil guards.
They are brave troops, or
they would not have held out
after their position
is hopeless.
But they are
professional soldiers
fighting against
a 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.
This battalion goes on leave,
and Julian, who is with them,
has three days leave
to the village.
The Duke of Alba's palace is
destroyed by rebel bombardment.
Treasures of Spanish art
are carefully salvaged
by government militia men.
Madrid, by its position,
is a natural fortress,
and each day the people make
its defenses more impregnable.
You stand in line all day
to buy food for supper.
Sometimes the food runs out
before you reach the door.
Sometimes a shell
falls near the line,
and at home they wait and wait,
and no one brings back
anything for supper.
Unable to enter the town,
the enemy try to destroy it.
This is a man who had
nothing to do with war,
a bookkeeper on his
way to his office
at eight o'clock in the morning.
So now they take
the bookkeeper away,
but not to his office
or to his home.
The government urges all
civilians to evacuate Madrid.
But where will we go?
Where can we live?
What can we do for a living?
I won't go, I'm too old.
But we must keep the
children off the street,
except when there is a
need to stand in line.
Recruiting is speeded
up by the bombardment.
Every useless killing
angers the people.
Men from all businesses,
professions, and trades
enlist in the Republican Army.
Meanwhile, in Valencia,
the President.
- Julian catches
a ride on an empty truck
and comes home sooner
than he expected.
Julian drills the village
boys in the evening,
when they come back
from the fields.
In Madrid, a future
shock battalion
of bullfighters,
football players, and
athletes is drilling.
They say the old goodbyes
that sound the same
in any language.
She says she'll wait.
He says that he'll come back.
He knows she'll wait.
Who knows for what, the
way the shelling is.
Nobody knows if he comes back.
"Take care of the kid," he says.
"I will," she says,
and knows she can't.
They both know that when
they move you out in trucks,
it's to a battle.
Death comes each morning to
these people of the town,
sent from the hills
two miles away.
The smell of death is acrid,
high-explosive smoke
and blasted granite.
Why do they stay?
They stay because
this is their city.
These are their homes.
Here is their work.
This is their fight,
the fight to be allowed
to live as human beings.
Boys look for bits
of shell fragment
as they once
gathered hailstones.
So the next shell finds them.
The German artillery has
increased their allowance
for battery today.
Before, death came when
you were old or sick,
but now it comes to
all this village.
High in the sky
and shining silver,
it comes to all who have no
place to run, no place to hide.
Three Junkers planes did this.
The government pursuit-planes
shot one Junkers down.
I can't read German, either.
These dead came from
another country.
They signed to work in
Ethiopia, the prisoners said.
We took no statements
from the dead,
but all the letters
we read were very sad.
The Italians lost more
killed, wounded, and missing
in this single
battle of Brihuega
than in all the Ethiopian war.
The rebels attack the
Madrid-Valencia road again.
They've crossed the Jarama river
and try to take
the Arganda bridge.
Troops are rushed from the
north to the counter-attack.
The village works
to bring the water.
They arrive at
the Valencia road.
The infantry in the assault,
where cameras need
much luck to go.
The slow, heavy-laden,
undramatic movement forward.
The men in echelon,
in columns of six,
in the ultimate loneliness
of what is known as contact,
where each man knows
there is only himself
and five other men, and before
him, all the great unknown.
This is the moment that all
the rest of war prepares for,
when six men go
forward into death
to walk across a stretch of land
and, by their presence on
it, prove this earth is ours.
The counter-attack
has been successful.
The road is free.
Six men were five,
then four were three.
But these three stayed,
dug in and held the ground,
along with all the other
fours and threes and twos
that started out as sixes.
The bridge is ours.
The road is saved.
The men who never fought before,
who were not trained in arms,
who only wanted work
and food, fight on.