"Now You Have Seen It": Ernest Hemingway, Joris Ivens, and The Spanish Earth

The 1937 film The Spanish Earth (dir. Joris Ivens) was a collaborative effort, and Hemingway's participation as a screenwriter and voiceover narrator represented a significant departure from his usual role as a solitary writer. In addition to Hemingway, John Ferno, Helen van Dongen, Irving Reis, Marc Blitzstein, and Virgil Thomson all labored individually and together, under the creative and brilliant direction of Joris Ivens, selecting and integrating the film footage with sounds, music, script, and narration. Documenting and analyzing the nature of this collaboration offers interesting insights into how Hemingway's personal, political, and aesthetic motives for making the film fit with those of Joris Ivens and the rest of the production crew.