First Approach of Hollywood to the Spanish Civil War: <em>The Last Train from Madrid </em> (1937)

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War was a tac Marzo 2013 Año XV (122) pp. 106-120itly forbidden topic in Hollywood controlled by self-censorship of the Hays Office and PCA. Therefore, American film companies only produced three films about that war while it was taking place (1936-1939). This article analyses the historical content and the ideological discourse of The Last Train from Madrid (James Hogan, 1937), the first approach of Hollywood to the war of Spain. This is a minor film, which has been barely studied by film analysts and is still commercially unavailable. Nevertheless, it is so relevant since it was the first view offered to the American public on Spanish belligerency in a fiction film. Such a point of view was the result of the restraint exercised by self-censorship, which took place by way of deliberate impartiality and a distant and apolitical stance. Its filmic effects were absolute ambiguity and confusion. As a result, this feature film is a clear reflection of the official attitudes of neutrality and non-interference shared by both Hollywood’s self-censorship system and the United States Government, and it established itself as a prediction of what happened in history: non-intervention of democratic Western powers in the Spanish conflict.