A controversial Hollywood product with echoes of Guernica and a decidedly pro-Spanish Republican stance, Blockade was the first Hollywood film to deal with the Spanish Civil War, and is considered the classic of the genre. Henry Fonda is cast as a farmer whose love of the land is so strong as to instill courage in the Spanish peasants as they fight the Nazi-aided Franco forces. There is a love story - he falls in love with Madeleine Carroll, unbeknownst to him a Fascist spy - but the film's climax reflects the filmmakers' admiration for the Spanish struggle more than for the Hollywood story: as a starving townspeople crowd around to watch their food supply blown to bits in the port, Fonda asks, “Where is the conscience of the world?”
Condemned by the right wing in America, and banned altogether in France, Blockade was directed by William Dieterle, a German immigrant to Hollywood whose work often “reflected Hollywood's social conscience, striking out against intolerance, injustice, and bigotry” (Meyer, “Warner Brothers Directors”), and whose love for the Russian cinema is manifested in his mastery of crowd scenes and composition. In the late Thirties, Dieterle became increasingly alarmed by the European situation; Blockade was made at a time when the Spanish Civil War began to turn in the Fascists' favor. It was produced by Walter Wanger, the foremost producer of socially-conscious Hollywood films, in particular for Warner Bros. in the Thirties, and written by John Howard Lawson, who was later jailed as one of the “unfriendly ten.” (JB)