I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Producer: Walter Wanger. Released through United Artists. Copyright 7 June 1938 by Walter Wanger Productions, Inc. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 16 June 1938 (ran one week). U.S. release: 17 June 1938. Australian release: 15 September 1938. 9 reels. 84 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A Loyalist peasant (Fonda), aided by a Fascist spy (Carroll) whom he has converted to the Loyalist cause, raise the blockade of Barcelona.NOTES: Classified "C" for "Condemned" by the Legion of Decency, "Blockade" is a famous (or infamous) film that brought little credit on those who supported it (Democrats, Socialists, Communists and assorted left-wingers) and none at all to those who so vehemently opposed it (Catholics, Masons, Episcopalians, McCarthyites, Birchists, Ku Klux Klansmen, Republicans and other right-of-center and far-right organizations). Lawson was later blacklisted by the witch-hunting HUAC. Oddly enough, producer Walter Wanger managed to survive the post-war "anti-American" hysteria, but director Dieterle found himself on what he called "the gray list". As a result, his work opportunities were severely limited.Negative cost: $692,086. Initial world-wide rentals gross: $718,693. As only a 50% share of the gross at most was returned to Wanger, he ended up with a massive loss.COMMENT: Despite the pretensions of its scriptwriter, this romantic drama, set during the Spanish Civil War, is largely comic-book stuff. Clean-cut Henry Fonda, gazing moodily at Miss Carroll whilst quoting romantic poetry, — or stirring up refugees to resist the enemy, — is about as unconvincing a Spanish peasant as you can get. At least Fonda and all the other players — with two notable exceptions — spare us any attempts whatever at Spanish accents.The first of the exceptions of course is Leo Carrillo. He is obviously along mostly for comic relief, though he does have some "serious" bits, all of which he plays in an obnoxiously broad and hammy manner.Our second Spanish harmonizer is Vladimir Sokoloff (ingeniously introduced in one of the film's rare touches of directorial invention by tracking shots of his white-spatted feet) who provides the movie's one really convincing performance. His reluctant spy easily creams the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, his role is all too small, his death leading to Miss Carroll's delightfully trite encounter with Fonda: "You killed him. You!" — "I'm sorry, miss. I didn't know he was your father."The absurdity and unintentional ludicrousness of Miss Carroll's scenes with Fonda, allied with their pretentiously banal dialogue ("Never to see the sun again!"), plus the melodramatic contrivances of the plot twists that inexorably manage to bring these two stars constantly together, rank among the worst ever perpetrated in an "A" picture. How our Madeleine can keep a straight face through her "I never had a country" lines, rates as a minor miracle of histrionic self-control.As if one clown in the plot were not enough, the script later introduces Reginald Denny as a stage Englishman, whose function is mainly to feed lines to Carrillo. They indulge in a purgative, totally unfunny conversation about tinned corn beef.The pseudo-Spanish music score has to be heard to be believed. Heavily underlining every scene, it reaches a climax of movie bathos in the episode with Fonda leading the peasants to resist behind sandbanks, whilst a stirring off-camera chorus urges, "Fight for the Right!"Complete with obviously phony backdrops, the sets take pride of place as some of the most obvious fakes ever to come out of Hollywood. "Blockade" was most certainly filmed entirely on a studio sound- stage.

In the spring of 1936 in Castelmare, the peasants Marco (Henry Fonda) and Luis (Leo Carrillo) help the aristocratic Russian Norma (Madeleine Carroll) that had a car accident while driving to the house of her father Basil (Vladimir Sokoloff) and Marco falls in love with Norma.Sooner the Spanish Civil War begins and Marco leads a group of peasants to defend Castelmare and he is assigned lieutenant of the rebels' army. Meanwhile, Basil and Norma are forced to spy for Andre Gallinet (John Halliday). Marco suspects of Basil and follows him to his room. When Basil reacts, Marco kills him in a shooting.Meanwhile, Castelmare is under siege and without supplies, and Norma escapes from Marco. But she is blackmailed by Gallibet and forced to return to Castelmare with information about the ship that is bringing supplies for the population. "Blockade" is a shallow and corny melodrama during the Spanish Civil War (17 July 1936 to 01 April 1939). The dull romance between Marco and Norma has no chemistry and the author uses a historical event that is happening in 1938 in a neutral position and no references. The final speech of Henry Fonda's character is one of the awfullest conclusions that I have ever seen in a classic. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Bloqueio" ("Blockade")

The late and unlamented Senator Joseph McCarthy was wrong about many things, but one thing he got right was the extent of Communist penetration of the American movie industry during the thirties and forties; despite the fact that the Communist Party of the USA had virtually no popular support a remarkable number of Hollywood screenwriters and directors had links to the Party. What McCarthy got wrong was the idea that these individuals posed any real threat to American democracy. The combined efforts of all these Marxist intellectuals did not result in any rise in support for the Party (its best performance in a Presidential election was 0.3% of the vote in 1932). Indeed, they did not even succeed in getting any films made which could be regarded as furthering the Communist cause, other than a few wartime propaganda films like "North Star" which were made-with the blessing of the American authorities- to highlight the Soviet war effort."Blockade" is a case in point. The script was written by John Howard Lawson, one of the most hard-line Communists working in Hollywood, about the Spanish Civil War, a cause dear to the heart of every leftist. And yet its script is so confused that it is impossible to tell whether its politics are pro-Republican or pro-Nationalist.Marco, a small farmer living somewhere near the Mediterranean coast of Spain, takes up arms to defend his land against the Bad Guys, and then becomes part of the Good Guys' army. He takes part in the defence of Castelmare, a port city held by the Good Guys but being blockaded by the Bad Guys who are hoping to starve it into surrender. The plot revolves around the attempts of the Good Guys to send a ship through the blockade to bring food to the starving citizens, and the attempts of the Bad Guys and their spies within the city to frustrate this plan by sinking the ship.No doubt if Lawson had had his way he would have written a script which made it quite clear that the Good Guys were to be identified with the Republicans, but the studio- who doubtless felt that actually making a film about the conflict was quite brave enough- were determined that they should not be seen as favouring one side against the other, and the script was therefore neutered so as to ensure that the question of who the Good Guys and the Bad Guys actually were remained obscure. The film makes no reference to the International Brigades or to foreign intervention in the war, and all personal names and place names are fictitious. (The name "Castelmare" is actually Italian rather than Spanish, as is "Montefiore", another place mentioned in the film. The hero's name in Spanish would normally be "Marcos" rather than "Marco", and there are also characters with the Italian-sounding names "Pietro" and "Seppo". Lawson seems to have got confused about the differences between Spanish and Italian).There are some factors which do indeed suggest that the Good Guys are intended to be identified with the Republicans, in particular the fact that the Bad Guys carry out air raids against civilian targets, a typically Nationalist tactic. Some have also pointed to the fact that the chief Bad Guy spies, a young woman named Norma and her father, are of Russian origin, although it should be mentioned that not all Russian émigrés at this period were Tsarists or even right-wingers; there were plenty of Russian liberals, social democrats, anarchists and Trotskyites in exile from Stalin's regime. (Norma later has a change of heart when she sees the suffering the blockade is causing, switches to the Good Guy side and becomes Marco's love-interest).Other factors, however, suggest that the Good Guys are intended to be identified with the Nationalists, and not only the design of their uniforms which another reviewer mentioned. Marco mentions that the Bad Guys are targeting churches for destruction, just as the anarchists and communists did in the regions of Spain under their control. His taking up arms in defence of his land recalls the fact that the leftist programme of collectivising land forced many small farmers, who otherwise would have had little sympathy with Fascism, to support the Nationalist cause, fearing that in the event of a Republican victory they would share the fate of the Russian kulaks.Yet despite its political incoherence the film has some good points. Indeed, it is perhaps the film's refusal to take sides that makes it still watchable more than seventy years on, certainly more watchable than a mere Francoist or anti-Francoist propaganda tract would be. Certainly, it is dated, something shown in those scenes which supposedly take place outdoors but which were in fact shot in a studio in front of very unconvincing-looking backcloths. Although it ends with a rousing peroration from Marco in which he calls for outside intervention in the war, its main interest today is as an anti-war drama, a film which shows us the human cost of war, a cost which remains the same whether the war is being waged by Good Guys or Bad Guys. 6/10

Although Blockade managed to get two Academy Award nominations for Best Music Score and Best Original Screenplay, time has not dealt well with the film. For Whom The Bells Toll is a great Hemingway novel and great film made from that novel and it is a far better interpretation of the Spanish Civil War. Which was still going on when Blockade was made by Walter Wanger in 1938 and released by United Artists. Wanger had under personal contract at the time Henry Fonda whom he had brought to Hollywood to recreate his Broadway starring role in The Farmer Takes A Wife. After that during the Thirties he mostly rented Fonda's services out to the studios until Fonda signed a contract with 20th Century Fox to get to play Tom Joad in The Grapes Of Wrath.One of the big problems is the casting of Henry Fonda as a Spanish peasant who joins the Republican Army and is the voice of the Spanish proletariat on screen. Fonda is just way too American in his speech to ever be convincing as anything else. As the voice of an American worker, Tom Joad in The Grapes Of Wrath, Fonda was perfect. As a Spaniard he just doesn't cut it. But he was certainly a bigger box office than the guy who should have played the part, Gilbert Roland.While still just a peasant working his fields before war comes, Fonda meets up with Madeleine Carroll who is a Russian expatriate traveling through Spain to meet her father Vladimir Sokoloff and another family friend John Halliday. She doesn't know it, but the two of them are spies. And she gets roped into their espionage game as well.The story of the Spanish Civil War is a complex one, but one of the failures of Blockade is that we never get any kind of background. Roughly speaking the bulk of the military staged a coup against the Republic of Spain and in the end which came in 1939, Francisco Franco emerged as a fascist dictator of Spain out of all the generals in revolt. But none of that is explained here in Blockade. All we know is that it's an amorphous 'them' out there making it tough on the peasants who are in fact supporting the constitutional and elected Republic of Spain.Although the wholesale bombing of civilians had first been done in Ethiopia by the Italians, civilian bombing targets were first done in Europe in the Spanish Civil War. It was new and frightening and widely covered in the domestic and foreign press. The story of Blockade centers around a coastal town in which a relief ship cannot get through. The port may have to be surrendered and with it the whole province. It's what the Nationalists are working for and the Republicans like Fonda trying to prevent, though the names Nationalist and Republican are never used.John Howard Lawson wrote the original script that got the Academy nod and he was one of the later Hollywood Ten and one who in fact made no bones about his Marxist sympathies. But this film has been so drained of politics that it's almost antiseptic.I'd say Blockade is one for fans of the leads and an interesting if mediocre way showing how Hollywood handled a burning issue of the time.