World Film and Television Progress (1937-1938)

MOVIE; IN MADRID by Richard Watts, Jun. If you stand on the balcony of the twelfth floor of Madrid's embattled skyscraper, the Telefonica, and look but a few kilometres in the distance, you will see enemy territory on three sides of you. As all the world knows, the city has undergone nine months of the terrors, perils and hardships of modern warfare's refinements of beleaguerment. It has undergone weeks and months of artillery bombardment and, until the government became powerful in the air, of murderous aviation assault. Shells of every variety have rained into its streets and against its buildings. Perhaps five thousand civilians have been slain, whole districts have been razed and something like a tenth of the city has been destroyed. The Gran Via, one of the main thoroughfares of Madrid, is not far from a shambles, and the telephone building alone has been struck by exactly 117 shells. Yet the people go quietly and serenely about the business of their everyday life and seem as carefree as if their Spain was the land of song and laughter that the tourist circulars used to insist that it was. It must be clear to the commanders of the Fascist forces that no great military purpose is served by the shelling of Madrid. The only answer, outside of attributing the artillery attacks to sheer spitefulness, is that their purpose is to break the morale of the populace. And in this it is obvious that their failure is as miserable as the Fascist failure to capture the city at the beginning of the siege, when every military authority — save General Miaja — thought that its fall was inevitable. In fact, the whole enemy procedure has had an exactly opposite effect. It merely has made the people more stubborn and determined in their resistance. Despite everything, the population of Madrid remains approximately the one million that it was at the beginning of the war, and, for all the strain of undergoing a long and arduous siege, the people remain unshaken and unafraid, a tribute not only to the courage of the men and women of Spain, but to the dogged determination and genius for adjustment of the human spirit. Half an hour after a fierce bombardment the people are calmly walking through the streets once more and the children are again playing unconcernedly on the sidewalks. Then just for excitement, the people go to the "movies" or see a very bad vaudeville show. Thirty picture theatres and sixteen of the so-called "legitimate" variety are crowded every afternoon and evening — there are no night shows, because Madrid becomes a ghost city after dark. For thrills the Madrilenos, who have been shelled the night before and have watched air battles in the clouds above them that morning, attend The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, or James Cagney in G Men. Nothing seems to entertain them more than to watch a lot of actors blazing away at one another with blank cartridges, and the scene in Top Hat, where Fred Astaire, in one of his dances, uses his cane as a machine gun and shoots down a male chorus, is received rapturously at every showing. You might think that the Madrilenos went to the films for escape and would hardly enjoy pictures that dealt with a topic so close to home as, say, an air battle. Yet The Hawk and the Eagle, a Paramount film of perhaps four years ago, which had some pretty grim scenes of aerial combat, is a great success here, and a picture showing an air raid, wherein the actors being bombed behaved unrealistically, became a local laugh riot, with the audience calling out ironic advice to the players on the screen. Incidentally, it is rather curious to note that several German films and such an imperialistic photoplay as Rhodes are being shown, and that at least two child vaudeville actresses are billed as "The Spanish Shirley Temple." Truly Madrid did seem a ghost city when Mr. Neville, the reformed bridge expert, and I arrived at 1 o'clock in the morning, just two weeks ago. There wasn't a light in the streets save that made by the headlights of our car, and no one seemed stirring in the city save a few assault guards, armed with rifles, who patrolled the sidewalks, silently and Thev Shall not Pass" — International Sound Films slowly. In the moonlight the amount of wreckage seemed over-emphasised and Madrid appeared as an ancient, dead city, deserted by its inhabitants centuries before. There was still some activity at the press office, however, and the bushy-haired woman in charge suggested that we stay at the Florida Hotel, since she knew there were vacant rooms there and the place was probably safe, as it had not been shelled for several days. I am grateful to her for recommending the Florida, since it is the sort of hotel Robert E. Sherwood might have thought up for a Spanish version of Idiofs Delight. It certainly is in the line of fire, anyway, and when shells whistle over your head you can't be sure whether they are being fired by the besiegers or the defenders. The men who work at the hotel insist that it is one of the safest places imaginable, since the rebels can shoot at it from only two sides. Furthermore, they remind you that it has been hit only sixteen times, while the place next door has been struck 35 times. No one has yet been killed in it, although the room occupied by Sefton Delmar, the correspondent of The London Express, was demolished when, fortunately, he was absent. The Florida is situated just off the favourite shelling ground of the enemy, the Gran Via, and the enemy can shell you from a couple of excellent vantage points. In fact, there is a school of thought which holds that the very existence of the hotel is a gesture of contempt toward the enemy. These people sometimes refer to the hotel as Shell Chateau, although those of us who eat there regularly prefer to think of it as Olive Oil Manor. But the horse steak is excellent and it is the only hotel in town in which you can get a hot bath, and you know how we bold Anglo-Saxons enjoy our hot baths. If we only had had a piano in the lobby the other morning we could have played the last act of Idiofs Delight right there. (Courtesy, New York Herald Tribune) 31