Sierra de teruel. L'Espoir

Teruel mountains. Hope (1939)

   There are occasions in which the making of a film becomes a legend and an epic in itself, no matter what the film is about. Sierra de Teruel, based on a novel by André Malraux's who also directed, is one example of ambitious filmmaking that would only achieve recognition in Spain after Francisco Franco's death.

   The French writer was part of a group of intellectuals who came to Spain at the beginning of the Civil War to support the Republican government. When he saw how the Fascists dealt the legal government and the promise of republicanism, and the support Nazi Germany and Mussolini were giving them, he set up a flight squadron to assist the government in the war effort. The adventure failed for lack of equipment and international support, but it provided the material for a war epic about a group of courageous pilots who defend a position on the Aragon front.

   After his fighting experience, he wrote a novel, L'espoir (Hope), whose third section would become the basis of a film script. He toured the United States to promote the loyalist cause and came back to work on his film project with funding provided by the Spanish government. The result is a daring, exciting narrative that uses literary devices and film style learned from contemporary Soviet cinema. He shot in Spain in late 1938, struggling against lack of negative stock and difficult conditions; by early 1939, with the Fascist troops surrounding Barcelona, he had to leave Spain. Arriving in France, he realized that he did not have enough material to cover the whole narrative, and he shot the necessary images in Paris studios. By the time the film was completed, the war was over and the Fascists had won.

   The French government allowed an early exhibition of the film, but on the eve of World War II they did not want to be seen as too involved in Spain's internal affairs, and withdrew their support for the project. At the same time, the Fascists in Spain were using the film's power for propaganda purposes. When the Nazis arrived in Paris shortly after, the film was destroyed, but luckily a print had been salvaged. It had a triumphant opening in Spain in 1977.