This now-classic documentary tells the story of the Spanish Civil War from 1931 to 1939 with newsreel footage gleaned from archives in six countries. It is a masterfully edited work, creating an elegiac mood, a sorrowful looking-back (from the sixties, when Franco still ruled in Spain, and elsewhere wars to "save the world from communism" still raged on). But there is above all an immediacy to the film, derived from a moment in history when newsreel photographers were able to capture battles as they had never been photographed before, and then turn their cameras onto the sorrow of a people being torn apart. A poetic narration is spoken by John Gielgud, Irene Worth and others, but the film's strength, and major source of information, are to be found in its images.