Hemingway & Gellhorn: Papa Met His Match

Ernest Hemingway deliberately cultivated his notoriously macho image.  Yet, he somehow he found four women willing to marry him at various points of his life.  That was a lot of optimism, on everyone’s part.  Though she had the shortest tenure as a “Mrs. Hemingway,” war correspondent Martha Gellhorn was the most notable.  Matching and at times surpassing his feats of war zone journalistic daring, Gellhorn fired his passion and inspired his professional respect and jealousy.  Their tempestuous relationship is dramatized in Philip Kaufman’s HBO Film Hemingway & Gellhorn (trailer here) now currently airing on the network.

When ambitious young magazine writer Martha Gellhorn first meets the funky, grungy Hemingway in a Key West bar, they can barely resist tearing the clothes off each other.  The fact that he is married hardly matters to either of them.  However, their animal attraction will have to briefly wait until they reunite covering the Spanish Civil War, at the behest of ardent Spanish Republican supporter John Dos Passos.

Working with Dutch Communist documentarian-propagandist Joris Ivens, Hemingway and Dos Passos film The Spanish Earth (with Gellhorn tagging along), for the purpose of rallying American audiences to the Republican cause.  Frankly, it is considerable more compelling to watch their run-and-gun shooting process in H&G than the historical documentary itself.  That adrenaline also fuels the war reporters’ torrid affair.

Just like Hemingway and Gellhorn’s relationship, the film really clicks during their time together in Spain.  Viewers are served a liberal helping of Nationalist atrocities, but the portrayal of the Soviet forces is also refreshingly unvarnished, particularly with respects to fatal purging of heroic Loyalist soldier Paco Zarra, a stand-in for Dos Passos’ doomed friend José Robles.  While the literary power couple is shown fawning over Chou En-lai and sneering at the gauche Chiangs in China, Gellhorn also reports from Finland, unequivocally siding with the Finns against the Soviet invaders.

Unfortunately, the film loses vitality with the aging Hemingway, sliding into the long denouement of his dubious u-boat chasing Cuban years and sad final days in Idaho.  By the time America enters WWII, screenwriters Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner clearly suggest Gellhorn was more of a man than Hemingway.  Of course, this is a common problem with bio-pics.  To be accurate, they can almost never end with the good stuff.

Regardless of his character arc, Clive Owen totally goes for broke as Hemingway.  One of the few actors working today who can come across as both manly and literate, he bellows and carouses with relish.  It is a larger than life performance, bordering on camp, yet he is still able to convey Hemingway’s inner demons and nagging self-doubts.  He also manages to dial it down periodically for some saucy Tracy-and-Hepburn bantering with Nicole Kidman’s Gellhorn.  Likewise, Kidman is on a very short list of actresses who can play smart, sophisticated, and alluring, simultaneously.  In fact, she could be channeling Hepburn and the Rosalind Russell of His Girl Friday as the fast-talking, khaki-wearing journalist crusading against injustice, which is frankly pretty cool.

In addition to the strong chemistry between the leads, H&G boasts a strong supporting ensemble.  David Strathairn is particularly engaging as the disillusioned idealist, Dos Passos, serving as a subtle corrective to Hemingway’s ethical malleability.  Metallica’s Lars Ulrich adds notable color as Ivens, while Tony Shaloub conveys a sense of both the menace and tragedy of the Stalinist true believer Mikhal Koltsov, who is considered to be the source for the Karkov character in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Again, the most inspired work comes during or prior to the Spanish Civil War sequences.

Frequently approximating the look of black-and-white news reels and Ivens’ documentary footage, H&G is highly cinematic (getting a vital assist from cinematographer Rogier Stoffers).  Kaufman is a big canvas filmmaker, with sufficient artistic stature to merit a recent MoMA film retrospective—a high honor indeed.  While steamier and gossipier than The Right Stuff, it is downright staid compared to his Henry & June and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 

An appropriately messy film sprawling all over the place, H&G is rather rowdily entertaining, capturing good deal more historical insight than one would expect.  Definitely recommended for those who appreciate the Hemingway oeuvre and persona (as well admirers of Gellhorn or Dos Passos), Hemingway & Gellhorn airs again on HBO June 2^nd, 7^th, 10^th, 11^th, 15^th, and 19^th and on HBO2 on June 4^th, 6^th, 12^th, 17^th, 21^st, 25^th, and 30^th.

DocuWeeks LA ’11: The Mexican Suitcase

Many writers, most notably including Hemingway and Malraux, tried to write the Spanish Civil narrative for a worldwide audience. However, it was the work of trailblazing war photojournalist that supplied the images for the Republican cause célèbre. Unfortunately, thousands of his negatives were lost, suspected to be somewhere in Mexico. Through the efforts of the International Center of Photography (ICP), founded by the photographer’s late brother Cornell, the not-so apocryphal case was found and its contents have been catalogued and preserved. The story of the photos and the photojournalists behind the camera are told in Trisha Ziff’s The Mexican Suitcase (trailer here), which is currently screening as part of the 2011 DocuWeeks in Los Angeles.

Not really a suitcase per se (strangely, it is not pictured on the film’s one-sheet), the suitcase was a small partitioned box crafted by darkroom assistant Imre “Csiki” Weiss. Inside were not just scores of Capa negatives, including some of his best known images, but also those of his wife Gerda Taro and close colleague David Seymour, a.k.a. “Shim.” In fact, the suitcase led to many photos previously considered part of the Capa canon to be reattributed to Taro or Seymour.

Those who only know Capa as a name and perhaps for the iconic “Falling Soldier,” supposedly taken at Cerro Muriano (the authenticity of which has fallen into dispute), should certainly gain an appreciation of his work through Suitcase. Though it was impossible to compose shots in a traditional sense during the heat of battle, he clearly had a talent for framing the action on the fly. The film also gives Taro and Seymour their proper due for battlefield fearlessness.

Unfortunately, Suitcase is overly simplistic in its treatment of the Spanish Civil War, perhaps reflecting the involvement of groups dedicated to promoting the legacy of the Communist-oriented Abraham Lincoln Brigade. As a result, Suitcase strictly adheres to the “good war” Party line, ignoring the sometimes bloody Republican in-fighting between Communists and Anarchists, the Republican atrocities committed against the Catholic Church, the purges perpetrated by Republican sponsor Joseph Stalin (by this time generally public knowledge amongst the educated classes), and the bitter divisions amongst ALB veterans stemming from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. That is unfortunate, because it robs the film of nearly all the irony and messiness that made the war such a compelling episode of world history. Indeed, which would you rather read, Ernest Hemingway’s undeniably pro-Republican but still nuanced For Whom the Bell Tolls or Alvah Bessie’s Party approved propaganda?

As art history, Suitcase is fascinating stuff, lucidly establishing the significance of the suitcase’s recovery and the further light its contents shed on the work of Capa, Taro, and Seymour. It also serves as an effective commercial for the ICP and its talented staff. On the other hand, as historical commentary on the Spanish Civil War, the film is rather shallow and should in no way be considered definitive. A mixed bag, recommended at least for photography buffs, Suitcase screens through Thursday (9/8) in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Sunset 5, after which point it should be officially qualified for Oscar considered, unless cancelled New York screenings during Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene affect its standing.

Papa Spain

Taking a day off in the City? Check out two vintage Spanish Civil War docs playing afternoons this week at the MoMA. You can come late too.

The first feature is Joris Ivens’s The Spanish Earth, best remembered for the commentary and narration by Ernest Hemingway. It takes it name from the arid stretch of land that might feed the embattled Madrid if brave Republican farmers can finish their irrigation project. Evidently, this is the plain in Spain where it never rains. Hemingway tells viewers “we” have always wanted to irrigate the land but “they” would not allow it.

Despite its reputation, Earth does not hold up well. Ivens, a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize, was a doctrinaire Communist. For all the talk of human dignity in Earth, Ivens had no qualms about whitewashing slave labor when filming a documentary about a Soviet construction behemoth in 1931. Frankly, his visuals here are not particularly strong. While always completely earnest, many his scenes of peasants marching through the rocky fields cry out for Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, as they resemble the technical films MST3K used to send-up.

Earth fails precisely for the reasons the writings on the same war by Orwell and Hemingway himself are timeless. Their books capture the chaos and ambiguity of the Civil War, with its frustrating in-fighting between the Communists and anarchists, and the atrocities committed by both sides, including the Republicans, especially against the Church (which is conspicuously absent in Earth). Frankly, the film is not particularly effective as propaganda either, employing class warfare rhetoric and a grating score by longtime Communist Marc Blitzstein (when trying to generate Spanish sympathy, why not try some flamenco?).

Conversely, Return to Life from celebrated photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and leftist director Herbert Kline is much more successful, both as film and propaganda. As would be expected, it is visually much more striking, and the soundtrack effectively uses traditional Spanish folk music. Convincingly describing the war in terms of democracy under attack and focusing on the Republican medical corps, Return is essentially a Why We Fight for the Loyalist cause.

Interestingly, both films mention in passing the Moorish legions fighting with Franco’s Royalists and Mussolini’s fascists. It was a little remarked upon early case of cooperation between Islamists and fascists that has continued to develop, as explicated in Barbet Schroeder’s documentary Terror’s Advocate.

Earth has historical significance largely as vehicle to hear Hemingway’s voice. His words about the “good fight” are far richer in For Whom the Bell Tolls and his short stories. While it was certainly also produced for propaganda purposes, Return is a very watchable film, continuing to serve the historic interests of the Republican cause. Both films screen together at MoMA today and tomorrow.