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THE FILM SINCE THEN
Storck, which had to be made secretly, Ivens went to the United States. With American sponsorship, he made with Ernest Hemingway the brave anti-fascist films The Spanish Earth (1937) and The Four Hundred Million (1939), the latter being probably the most authentic film to be made about China, both of which have been mentioned earlier.1
In 1940, Pare Lorentz commissioned Ivens to make Power and the Land, the record of a day in the life of an American farm centring round the coming of electricity to rural districts and the human advantages it brings to farmers and their families. The film is an argument for rural co-operatives, but it is also, and deeply, an emotional impression of farm life, of planting and of harvest, of family relationships, of love for the land. During the war, Ivens worked for the U.S. Army Unit with Capra and for the National Film Board of Canada, and later became Film Commissioner for the Dutch East Indies, setting up headquarters in Australia against the day when the Japanese should be driven out and peace and democracy be brought to the Indonesians. When neither peace nor democracy materialised, Ivens publicly broke with the Dutch Government, tore up his valuable contract, and determinedly added injury to insult by producing in Australia Indonesia Calling ! ( 1946), a short reportage of the revolt of the Sydney waterfront workers who refused to load arms for the Dutch to be used against the embattled Indonesians. Made with practically no money and with every obstacle from the authorities, this film is typical of Ivens's whole career, and explains why his waits for sponsorship have often been long. But his fine attitude, uncompromising and strong-principled, has won him more than it cost, including the respect and admiration of sincere film-makers everywhere. Almost all of his films are uncompromisingly political and propagandist, but they differ from other political propaganda in being directly related to the people, and revealing a serene and sunny belief in people whatever the darkness of the age. Ivens has now returned to Europe
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