Producer: Walter Wanger. Released through United Artists. Copyright 7 June 1938 by Walter Wanger Productions, Inc. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 16 June 1938 (ran one week). U.S. release: 17 June 1938. Australian release: 15 September 1938. 9 reels. 84 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: A Loyalist peasant (Fonda), aided by a Fascist spy (Carroll) whom he has converted to the Loyalist cause, raise the blockade of Barcelona.
NOTES: Classified "C" for "Condemned" by the Legion of Decency, "Blockade" is a famous (or infamous) film that brought little credit on those who supported it (Democrats, Socialists, Communists and assorted left-wingers) and none at all to those who so vehemently opposed it (Catholics, Masons, Episcopalians, McCarthyites, Birchists, Ku Klux Klansmen, Republicans and other right-of-center and far-right organizations). Lawson was later blacklisted by the witch-hunting HUAC. Oddly enough, producer Walter Wanger managed to survive the post-war "anti-American" hysteria, but director Dieterle found himself on what he called "the gray list". As a result, his work opportunities were severely limited.
Negative cost: $692,086. Initial world-wide rentals gross: $718,693. As only a 50% share of the gross at most was returned to Wanger, he ended up with a massive loss.
COMMENT: Despite the pretensions of its scriptwriter, this romantic drama, set during the Spanish Civil War, is largely comic-book stuff. Clean-cut Henry Fonda, gazing moodily at Miss Carroll whilst quoting romantic poetry, — or stirring up refugees to resist the enemy, — is about as unconvincing a Spanish peasant as you can get. At least Fonda and all the other players — with two notable exceptions — spare us any attempts whatever at Spanish accents.
The first of the exceptions of course is Leo Carrillo. He is obviously along mostly for comic relief, though he does have some "serious" bits, all of which he plays in an obnoxiously broad and hammy manner.
Our second Spanish harmonizer is Vladimir Sokoloff (ingeniously introduced in one of the film's rare touches of directorial invention by tracking shots of his white-spatted feet) who provides the movie's one really convincing performance. His reluctant spy easily creams the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, his role is all too small, his death leading to Miss Carroll's delightfully trite encounter with Fonda: "You killed him. You!" — "I'm sorry, miss. I didn't know he was your father."
The absurdity and unintentional ludicrousness of Miss Carroll's scenes with Fonda, allied with their pretentiously banal dialogue ("Never to see the sun again!"), plus the melodramatic contrivances of the plot twists that inexorably manage to bring these two stars constantly together, rank among the worst ever perpetrated in an "A" picture. How our Madeleine can keep a straight face through her "I never had a country" lines, rates as a minor miracle of histrionic self-control.
As if one clown in the plot were not enough, the script later introduces Reginald Denny as a stage Englishman, whose function is mainly to feed lines to Carrillo. They indulge in a purgative, totally unfunny conversation about tinned corn beef.
The pseudo-Spanish music score has to be heard to be believed. Heavily underlining every scene, it reaches a climax of movie bathos in the episode with Fonda leading the peasants to resist behind sandbanks, whilst a stirring off-camera chorus urges, "Fight for the Right!"
Complete with obviously phony backdrops, the sets take pride of place as some of the most obvious fakes ever to come out of Hollywood. "Blockade" was most certainly filmed entirely on a studio sound- stage.
SYNOPSIS: A Loyalist peasant (Fonda), aided by a Fascist spy (Carroll) whom he has converted to the Loyalist cause, raise the blockade of Barcelona.
NOTES: Classified "C" for "Condemned" by the Legion of Decency, "Blockade" is a famous (or infamous) film that brought little credit on those who supported it (Democrats, Socialists, Communists and assorted left-wingers) and none at all to those who so vehemently opposed it (Catholics, Masons, Episcopalians, McCarthyites, Birchists, Ku Klux Klansmen, Republicans and other right-of-center and far-right organizations). Lawson was later blacklisted by the witch-hunting HUAC. Oddly enough, producer Walter Wanger managed to survive the post-war "anti-American" hysteria, but director Dieterle found himself on what he called "the gray list". As a result, his work opportunities were severely limited.
Negative cost: $692,086. Initial world-wide rentals gross: $718,693. As only a 50% share of the gross at most was returned to Wanger, he ended up with a massive loss.
COMMENT: Despite the pretensions of its scriptwriter, this romantic drama, set during the Spanish Civil War, is largely comic-book stuff. Clean-cut Henry Fonda, gazing moodily at Miss Carroll whilst quoting romantic poetry, — or stirring up refugees to resist the enemy, — is about as unconvincing a Spanish peasant as you can get. At least Fonda and all the other players — with two notable exceptions — spare us any attempts whatever at Spanish accents.
The first of the exceptions of course is Leo Carrillo. He is obviously along mostly for comic relief, though he does have some "serious" bits, all of which he plays in an obnoxiously broad and hammy manner.
Our second Spanish harmonizer is Vladimir Sokoloff (ingeniously introduced in one of the film's rare touches of directorial invention by tracking shots of his white-spatted feet) who provides the movie's one really convincing performance. His reluctant spy easily creams the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, his role is all too small, his death leading to Miss Carroll's delightfully trite encounter with Fonda: "You killed him. You!" — "I'm sorry, miss. I didn't know he was your father."
The absurdity and unintentional ludicrousness of Miss Carroll's scenes with Fonda, allied with their pretentiously banal dialogue ("Never to see the sun again!"), plus the melodramatic contrivances of the plot twists that inexorably manage to bring these two stars constantly together, rank among the worst ever perpetrated in an "A" picture. How our Madeleine can keep a straight face through her "I never had a country" lines, rates as a minor miracle of histrionic self-control.
As if one clown in the plot were not enough, the script later introduces Reginald Denny as a stage Englishman, whose function is mainly to feed lines to Carrillo. They indulge in a purgative, totally unfunny conversation about tinned corn beef.
The pseudo-Spanish music score has to be heard to be believed. Heavily underlining every scene, it reaches a climax of movie bathos in the episode with Fonda leading the peasants to resist behind sandbanks, whilst a stirring off-camera chorus urges, "Fight for the Right!"
Complete with obviously phony backdrops, the sets take pride of place as some of the most obvious fakes ever to come out of Hollywood. "Blockade" was most certainly filmed entirely on a studio sound- stage.