Land and Freedom (1995) (German Edition)

'Land and Freedom' review

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Land and Freedom (1995)

Photographers were few and far between especially in the supposed locations of the film. Back to clothing — in reality our trousers were baggy khaki coloured denim or woollen caught in at the ankles by buttons or a knitted woollen band to keep the dust from going up inside the trouser leg. The woollen ones which flopped over my boots were my first trousers with a short military style woollen jacket.

I was lucky to get a pair of boots to fit me and lost them after I was wounded. Thereafter I wore alpargatas open canvas sandals with plaited grass soles held on by tapes round the ankles.

2 thoughts on “Land and Freedom (1995)”

The men in the villages also wore alpargatas with the baggy type trousers made of hard wearing black corduroy. Some of us had khaki dispatch rider type denims caught in below the knee. That was how his body was recognised after he was blown up by a shell. Now for the story line. At the time the young Liverpool communist left to go to Spain, we were going in organised groups and not on our own. These groups were organised by the Communist Party and one of the group carried an introduction to the French Communist Party who arranged for their transport and accommodation through France and over the border into Spain.

By November all volunteers crossing the frontier were taken to a huge fort at Figueras from where they went in large groups by train to Albacete where they were documented and received into the International Brigades. So the naive depiction of how the young Liverpool Communist Party member was persuaded by complete strangers to join the POUM militia was a virtual impossibility. In any case no enthusiastic young communist of those days would have been taken in in such a way. Whoever thought up that story line displays a singular lack of knowledge of the Communists of those days.

Now here let it be said that when the British International Brigade Association was told that a film was to be made by Ken Loach about the war in Spain they offered their services but the offer was rejected. So the makers of the film bear full responsibility for all the wild inaccuracies and anachronisms that the film depicts. One wonders why the offer was refused. Let it also be made clear that the Spanish Communist Party took the realist view that the war was not about achieving a Communist state in Spain but about the defence of the democratic constitution established in which was a liberal one and contained provisions for much needed land reform and universal education which succeeding governments had failed to implement.

In this aim they were supported by the international Communist movement as expressed by the formation of the International Brigades.

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To attempt a workers revolution at a time of when international opposition to Communism was at its height would have been suicidal. Communists regarded the war as one against international Fascism, against three Fascist dictators whose declared aim was the destruction of western liberal democratic institutions and the creation of new empires.

Italy, in spite of being a member of the League of Nations was already engaged in wars of imperial conquest in Africa. I spent the last few days in France in the company of three Italians home on leave from the war in Africa who had arrived in their home village in the north of Italy to hear of the war in Spain and had promptly crossed the frontier into France to join the IB. The Italian dictator Mussolini was trying to recreate the ancient Roman Empire and to this end the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis had been created along with the Japanese war lords who were waging a war of conquest against China.

In furtherance of these aims Hitler and Mussolini had formed an alliance with the revolting Spanish generals and were supplying them not only with arms and planes but also pilots and combat troops without anything being done to effectively stop them by the western democracies that were next on the list for destruction. From their own literature it is clear that they considered the Communist attitude a betrayal of their aim of world revolution.

There is a fine opening as a funeral and a suitcase of memorabilia takes us from s Liverpool to s Spain. There is also a moment of reflexivity as we watch an audience and a film within a film.

As with his other films this is to a great degree a collective achievement. This sadly was the last collaboration between Allen and Loach, but intriguingly Paul Laverty, who has written for Loach since then, had small part as an extra in the film.

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The production and cast includes a cross-section of European crafts people. And his approach to filming, working chronologically and often surprising the cast, produces the sense of authenticity so important in his work. The film was shot in a ratio of 1. The dialogue includes English, Spanish and Catalan, mostly but not always subtitled. My memory is that in ,whilst there were a prints for release on the continent, in the UK there were only 4.

Land and Freedom ()

It seems we will see one of those on Sunday as the screening is from 35mm, always an additional pleasure. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

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