I think this is the first film about the Spanish Civil War since For Whom The Bell Tolls. Which would have been good, if it hadn't chosen to bang the Trotskyist drum and ignore the real fighters.
It starts with an historic blunder - the rising was not led by General Franco. It was organized by General Mola and General Franco sat on the fence till the last minute. But the Military-Rightists - not all fascists - had the sense to rally round their most successful leader.
The important front was Madrid, which held off the enemy till the very end. POUM, whose tale is told in this film, were a small force on a front that barely moved throughout the war.
That a Communist Party member should accidentally join POUM is no more likely than a Free Presbyterian accidentally taking Catholic communion. Besides, the Communist Party had a well-organized network taking members and sympathizers to the International Brigades. POUM had a smaller network which in Britain was linked to a body called the Independent Labour Party, which is how George Orwell got there. The hero's adventures in Spain somewhat shadow Orwell's, but have been reinvented to make him more likable, I suppose.
The telephone exchange was taken over because the Anarchists were tapping everyone's phone. This was done with the authorization of the legal elected government of Catalonia, a government trying desperately to rally military power against the Fascists, who were methodically conquering one Republican enclave after another. The bombing of Guernica and the fall of the Basque Republic occurred at much the same time. A bloody stupid time for leftists to get into a fight with an anti-Fascist government, I'd have thought.
It starts with an historic blunder - the rising was not led by General Franco. It was organized by General Mola and General Franco sat on the fence till the last minute. But the Military-Rightists - not all fascists - had the sense to rally round their most successful leader.
The important front was Madrid, which held off the enemy till the very end. POUM, whose tale is told in this film, were a small force on a front that barely moved throughout the war.
That a Communist Party member should accidentally join POUM is no more likely than a Free Presbyterian accidentally taking Catholic communion. Besides, the Communist Party had a well-organized network taking members and sympathizers to the International Brigades. POUM had a smaller network which in Britain was linked to a body called the Independent Labour Party, which is how George Orwell got there. The hero's adventures in Spain somewhat shadow Orwell's, but have been reinvented to make him more likable, I suppose.
The telephone exchange was taken over because the Anarchists were tapping everyone's phone. This was done with the authorization of the legal elected government of Catalonia, a government trying desperately to rally military power against the Fascists, who were methodically conquering one Republican enclave after another. The bombing of Guernica and the fall of the Basque Republic occurred at much the same time. A bloody stupid time for leftists to get into a fight with an anti-Fascist government, I'd have thought.