The Good Fight

Viva La Quince Brigada-Theme Music

• Film Title: The Good Fight
• Original Year of Production: 1984
• Studio: National Endowment for the Humanities
• Director: Noel Buckner, Mary Dore, Sam Sills
• Cast: Studs Terkel-narrator, Bill Bailey, Ruth Davidow, Salaria Key, Bill Macarthy, Milt Wolf.
• Producers: Noel Buckner, Mary Dore, Sam Sills

The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War is the documentary of men and women that travelled to Spain to fight Fascism in 1937. These were troubling times in Europe and the United States. America was just recovering from the worst economic depression in its 161 years of independence. Europe and its nations were trying to recover from the First World War while preparing for the next Great War lead by Hitler and his hyper-fascist right-wing idealogy. The Spanish Civil War was a fight for democracy and control of Spain led by General Fransico Franco and other generals against the Spanish Republic. According to Bonnie Smith, "The Spanish government appealed everywhere for assistance, but only the Soviet Union answered.(290) "So instead of massive international support, a few thousand volunteers from a variety of countries-including many students, journalists, and artists", "flocked to Spain to fight for the republic and democracy".(291) The film begins with eleven volunteers and their stories before, during, and after voluntary enlistment. These eleven volunteers are introduced and they explain why they wanted to enlist into this volunteer army. Bill Bailey who served as a seamen, longshoremen and active social activist provided an interesting account of how he and others like him would protest. He first described how he felt for others like him around the world. He described them as his “class brothers”. He goes on to state that he feels connected to men all around the world based on their mutual class. This is where the central theme is first examined by Bill Bailey’s and his description of Fascism in Germany and the abuses against Jews and how Bill empathizes for these poor people. The film thesis is the struggle against Fascism. These men and women were fighting against what they perceived as the fundamentally biased and anti-democratic Fascists in Spain. A slight problem one would have of the film is the oversimplification of the United States neutral stance during the mid-1930s.  This becomes evident after the film mostly examines the views of these volunteers without offering chances to rebuttle by other who did not fight in the Lincoln Brigade. Although there is a narrator, who does explain why America was neutral, there is little empathy expressed from these volunteers for America’s neutral policy during Spain’s Civil War. It becomes evident that this documentary follows more closely the volunteers than the actual events of the Spanish Civil War.

Although the accounts of the war from the volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade appear legitimate and in accord with the harsh fighting of war, the political affiliations of these men and women were possibly associated with Marxist idealogy providing interesting information mostly ignored in the film. According to Robert Rosenstone’s book, History on Film, Film on History, “the International Brigades were organized and directed by the Comintern, and dominated by officials from the Communist Party.” In addition, “at least 70 percent of the Americans were members of either the party or the Young Communist League. (p.81)  These excerpts from Rosenstone's book eludes to the power struggles by different political parties and ideologies during the 30’s. Yet it is interesting how the film makers chose never to identify these volunteers as having ever been members of even influenced by the Communist Party. Possibly the writers and directors of the documentary felt that the message of helping others and fighting fascism would only have been reduced by recognizing the volunteers affiliated with an use of the word Communist. Seeing how this film was released during 1984, which was the year that the USSR and other communist countries boycotted the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, one could imagine how Communism was less than favorable in the eyes of Americans during the Cold War.