Original subtitles

[maracas shaking]

[film reel clicking]

[gentle playful music]

[bombs screeching]

[loud explosion]

In 1919, young poets returning from the war

found new weapons in Dadaism and Surrealism.

In Moscow, the October Revolution of 1917

had toppled the old world order.

Meanwhile, Andre Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon

launched their own grenades.

They explored dreams and automatic writing,

invented games and founded reviews.

[bright orchestral music]

Man Ray immortalized the small band with his camera,

before returning to the arms of Kiki.

Picasso mixed the colors of Olga

with those of Marie-Therese.

Salvador Dali explored the dark side of his unconscious

and was sidelined by the Surrealists as a result.

In the early 1930s, the fascist threat forced artists

to become more politically involved.

But which guiding star could they turn to?

[people talking]

Louis Aragon found himself a family.

Born to a father who refused to recognize him,

he became a son of Stalin, the Little Father of the People.

Elsa Triolet gave him her heart and an adoptive fatherland:

The Soviet Union.

[man speaking in foreign language]

Thanks to her,

he entered the most orthodox Stalinist circles.

Aragon learned to speak Russian,

to wield the ideological hammer and the political sickle.

He was about to betray his old companions once and for all.

[steam engine puffing]

[train rattling]

Aragon arrived in Ukraine on November 16th, 1930.

Andre Breton had asked him

to represent the Surrealist movement

at the World Congress of Writers in Kharkov.

[people talking] [gentle music]

A panel of writers from around the world

had come to consider one major question:

What defined the literature of the Proletariat?

Who was in and who was out?

Or, as Stalin's subtext might have read,

"Where does a bunch of bourgeois writers

who are lazy by profession, homosexual by vice,

and greedy by nature, get off calling their review

'Surrealism In the Service of the Revolution?'"

What did they know about the Revolution and the Proletariat?

The message was clear.

The Communists would declare war on the Surrealists,

unless of course they started towing the party line.

Aragon signed a detailed mea culpa

stating that the Surrealists

had been wrong about everything.

They had despicably stood

by the idealistic theories of Freud,

and had shamefully defended traitors like Trotsky.

They had been led astray.

Aragon promised they would not have to be told again.

[crowd applauding]

From now on, they would submit all of their writing

for review by the Party's magnanimous censor board.

When he returned home,

he found Breton devastated by this betrayal.

Aragon tried a few evasive maneuvers,

but their falling-out was inevitable.

[brakes squealing]

[loud crashing]

In 1932, Dali, Eluard, Crevel and a few others

published a collective text

excoriating Aragon's intellectual cowardice.

The title itself said it all:

[eerie music]

"Turncoat!"

In the conflict between Aragon and Breton,

who refused to submit to Stalin's dictates,

many fell somewhere in between.

[gentle music]

The USSR was a big question mark at that time,

and their hearts were torn.

As a result, many made the journey to go see for themselves.

In 1933, the October Group set sail

for the International Olympiad of Proletarian Theater,

which was held in the USSR.

[ship horn blowing]

[people talking]

Poet Jacques Prevert was the theater troupe's scribe.

With his brother Pierrot, his friends Mouloudji,

Marcel Duhamel, Jean-Louis Barrault, and a few others,

he put on plays

in working-class neighborhoods and factories.

Since Soviet ships were not allowed to dock at French ports,

the October Group sailed from London.

These rabble-rousers with bad manners

immediately made their presence felt on the ship.

[people shouting] [light 30s music]

They slept in the cargo holds, took over the first class,

and chased girls.

When the ship stopped over in German ports,

its hammer and sickle

flying opposite the swastika flapping in the wind,

they would come ashore.

The ashes of banned books, burned in giant bonfires in 1933,

still hung in the air.

Some made contact with persecuted German Communists,

while others visited brothels.

[upbeat music]

No sooner had they arrived in Leningrad

than they were greeted by the comrades

of the Cobbler's Marching Band,

who were horrified to discover they had forgotten the lyrics

to the "Internationale."

Welcome to the USSR.

[people singing]

[man talking]

For several weeks, the October Group performed

for enthusiastic crowds.

[crowd applauding]

[streetcar bell dings]

At the Grand Theater of Moscow,

Stalin welcomed the troupe in person.

They were handed a letter to sign

calling Stalin a political, artistic and all-around genius,

but they refused.

Jacques Prevert was asked

why he wouldn't become a party member.

"They'd lock me up," he replied.

[bird chirping]

After Jacques Prevert got home,

Andre Gide prepared to take the reins.

For some time, the Soviets had been trying to ensnare him

in their web of propaganda.

Gide was a household name.

At over 60, many considered him to be a moral guiding voice.

As one of the founders

of the prestigious NRF publishing house,

he had been active around issues

that made him good comrade material.

In "Recollections on the Assize Court,"

he criticized bourgeois justice.

In "Voyage in the Congo," he attacked colonialism.

He had traveled to Berlin to defend the Communists accused

of setting fire to the Reichstag.

He had aligned himself with Moscow on several occasions.

In short, Gide would make a pretty poster boy for the USSR.

[car puttering]

Gide was a very complex man,

revered by some and accused of perversion by others.

One had only to visit his home in Paris, on Rue Vaneau,

to realize there was more to him than met the eye.

Male lovers old and new could be found in every corner,

living there or passing through.

His guests included writers from around the world

and the champions of various causes.

[gentle playful music]

Across the hall lived Maria Monnom,

Gide's close friend and confidante,

and mother to Elisabeth,

the girl Gide had sired a daughter with

to secure his lineage.

[lips kissing]

Gide was named the baby's godfather.

Of a generous nature,

he made his daughter's mother a gift of Pierre Herbert,

his lover at the time.

Nevertheless, Gide would never forget his official wife,

a cousin he had married years earlier

and whom he had sent to live on a remote property.

[gentle music]

[car puttering]

In June 1935, the apartment at Rue Vaneau

was in a state of pandemonium.

[typewriter keys clicking]

Four secretaries typed away

and the telephone rang off the hook.

[phone rings]

On the 21st, the International Congress of Writers

for the Defense of Culture was to begin in Paris.

[phone rings]

Andre Gide had agreed to preside over the Congress

with Andre Malraux.

230 delegates, including the big names in world literature,

had arrived from the four corners of the globe

to denounce fascism.

[gentle playful music]

In Germany, Hitler had usurped power.

And for 10 years now,

Mussolini had been crushing Italy in his iron fist.

[people talking]

Humanist Europe was up in arms against Nazism,

dubbed the "Brown Plague,"

which had already begun to deport Jews

and undesirable artists.

Einstein, Brecht, and Thomas Mann

fled Germany along with many others.

In attendance were Heinrich Mann, Robert Musil, HG Wells,

Aldous Huxley, Boris Pasternak and Isaac Babel.

All the speakers were of the same persuasion:

committed antifascists.

[flying figures squealing]

Since the Congress was sponsored by members of the Party,

none of the official guests digressed into Trotskyism,

anarchism or surrealism.

Louis Aragon played his cards so well

he managed to keep Andre Breton off the roster of speakers.

[dramatic music]

The two men had become sworn enemies.

One lectured from the presidential podium,

while the other snickered in the back row.

[snickering]

It was Paul Eluard who was to read Andre Breton's speech.

He was scheduled to appear at an evening session

on the second-to-last day.

By the time Paul Eluard got up to speak,

the journalists had all gone home

and the benches were empty.

Eluard concluded with these words,

which perfectly illustrated the rift

between Communists and Surrealists:

"Marx said, 'Transform the world,'.

Rimbaud said, 'Transform life'.

For us these two mantras are one and the same."

Surrealists and Communists both wanted a revolution,

just not the same one.

Eluard gradually distanced himself from Breton,

whom he found too overbearing, too intolerant.

[heavy footsteps]

He left the Hall of the Mutualite, for Faubourg St. Germain,

where he could often find an artist

critical of Aragon, Breton, and Communism,

as well as political meetings in general.

On that particular day, Picasso was also sitting in a cafe.

He couldn't keep his eyes off a striking brunette

seated a few tables away.

[gentle music]

She kept herself amused

by jabbing a sharp knife between her fingers.

[loud tapping]

Within minutes, she was bleeding.

Eluard knew the young woman.

Born to a Croatian father and a French mother,

she had grown up in Argentina.

She was 27, while Picasso was 55.

She had worked with Georges Bataille,

and moved in Surrealist circles.

She was a photographer.

Her name was Dora Markovitch,

but she was known to all as Dora Maar.

Two years earlier,

the painter had secretly fathered a second child:

Maya, the half-sister of little Paulo.

[Maya cooing]

Picasso finally found a compromise with Olga.

He would not grant her a divorce,

but would compensate her handsomely.

When Dora Maar entered his life, Picasso made room for her.

He opened his homes and his heart to her,

and celebrated her in his paintings.

He sent Marie-Therese to the countryside

where she lived in a little house

belonging to the dealer Ambroise Vollard.

He went to visit her there regularly.

Dora found him a new studio at 7 Rue des Grands Augustins,

a spacious loft previously occupied by Jean-Louis Barrault,

where the October Group had once rehearsed.

[lively band music]

The October Group had returned to the stage.

Jacques Prevert and his troupe paid homage

to the formation of the Popular Front.

[upbeat playful music]

They toured striking workshops,

department stores and factories.

[people shouting]

[people shouting]

The newspapers sent their reporters into the field

to cover the 1936 strikes.

In Billancourt and Saint-Ouen, at Bastille and Republique,

young photographers snapped photographs

of parades, balls, and other festivities.

[people shouting]

These included three close friends

whose names were still unknown:

David Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Andre Friedmann.

Friedmann had taken a young brunette

with a man's haircut under his wing.

Her name was Gerda Pohorylle

and she was also a photographer.

They were both Jews.

He was Hungarian and she was German.

He had opposed the Nazis in Berlin,

and she had fled the country in 1933.

They crossed paths in Paris.

When they arrived in France,

Gerda and Andre lived on fish caught in the Seine,

bread stolen from bakeries,

and the few pennies their friend Cartier-Bresson gave them.

The two starving artists were young, attractive and in love.

In 1934, the magazine "Vu"

sent Andre on assignment to Saarland.

[opera music] [people talking]

When he returned, he bought himself a Leica on credit.

It was with this small and inconspicuous camera

that the Hungarian covered the general strikes of 1936,

the demonstrations, and the victory of the Popular Front.

But the newspapers were not buying their photos,

so the young couple devised a scheme to help their chances.

They made the rounds of the publishers

posing as a photographer's assistant and sales agent.

[people talking]

"Who is this photographer?"

"An American.

A hero in his country.

Newspapers all over the world are fighting over him."

"And this photographer's name?"

"Robert Capa."

And that was how Andre Friedmann came to be Robert Capa.

Later, Gerda Pohorylle would chose the name Gerda Taro.

[airplane engine puttering]

On June the 16th, 1936, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro

missed one of the day's big events:

Andre Gide's departure for Moscow.

The Soviets had succeeded in getting

the French literary titan to pay them a visit.

The event was of considerable importance.

Gide was a symbol in the USSR,

and winning his support was a major cause.

[crowd cheering]

When his plane landed at the Moscow Aerodrome,

hundreds of reporters were there to greet him.

[crowd cheering]

The crowd offered him flowers

and showered him with hugs and kisses.

The Soviets spared no expense.

An official Lincoln drove Gide to a deluxe suite

at the Metropol Hotel,

six rooms with a sumptuous living room, bathroom and piano.

[piano key strikes]

[lively piano music]

That evening, Gide dined with Aragon,

who had arrived from London to welcome him.

The two men were not fond of each other.

Circumstances, however, required

that they come to a compromise.

Maxime Gorki, a friend of Lenin's

and the USSR's most beloved writer, had just died.

The country was in mourning.

Gide wrote a speech

to be delivered on the day of his funeral.

But Aragon read it first,

and finding it ridiculous, rewrote it.

"There was no reason

to let a French writer humiliate himself,"

he said disingenuously.

Gide delivered his speech on the Red Square

under the watchful eyes of comrade Stalin.

[Gide speaking] [playful music]

Four days later, Gide took the train to Leningrad.

There, he joined his travel companions

who had arrived from France by boat,

most notably Eugene Dabit, the author of "Hotel du Nord,"

and Jacques Schiffrin,

the creator of the Pleiade edition of great works.

[loud squealing] [train engine puffing]

[marching music]

Escorted by his retinue,

Gide ventured deeper into the country.

They traveled in a special railroad car

with compartments, sleeping berths, and a breakfast nook.

A motorcar drove alongside them

carrying welcome banners for their admirers to wave

when they arrived.

[playful music]

Everywhere they stopped,

the travelers were whisked off to banquets

held in their honor.

Each meal cost as much as one worker earned in a month.

They were always taken to the most luxurious hotels

and the best restaurants.

Comrade Gide was uneasy.

This isolation had begun to bother him.

He wanted to meet the people.

[door squeaking]

In Tbilisi he discovered the baths.

He was overjoyed.

"How extraordinary!"

Taking care not to be followed, he returned.

[train rattling]

As time went on, cracks appeared in the facade.

[gentle playful music]

The visitors counted the long lines in front of the shops,

noted that products were of poor quality

and in short supply.

The censors redacted the speeches they wrote.

[gentle playful music]

They saw poor people by the thousands,

but also the beginnings of an industrial bourgeoisie.

They saw the emergence of patriotic nationalism,

state-sanctioned art, and a new ruling class

whose bureaucrats were out of touch with the people.

They saw a total war being waged against religion,

a puppet press, and an insufferable personality cult.

Stalin!

Stalin was everywhere.

The population worshiped, adored and feared him.

Gide wanted to speak to him

about the condition of homosexuals,

who were being deported to camps for treatment.

But Stalin refused to open his door.

[people talking]

A few days later,

Andre Gide and his companions left the country.

[airplane engine puttering]

On the plane back to France, the writer imagined the book

he could write about his journey.

[dishes clanking]

Shortly after his return to France,

Andre Gide had dinner with Clara and Andre Malraux

in a restaurant on the Place des Victoires.

Some thought of Malraux as the raider of Khmer riches.

In 1925, he was sentenced by the tribunal of Phnom Penh

for pillaging seven bas-reliefs from a temple in Angkor.

Others thought of him as a friend of the Reds.

But everyone knew him the author of "The Royal Way,"

winner of the 1930 Interallie prize,

and "Man's Fate," which garnered the Prix Goncourt in 1933.

[man speaking in foreign language]

Gide was returning from the USSR.

Malraux was back from Spain.

The two men had plenty to talk about.

[dramatic music]

[airplane engine puttering]

Spain was a bloody battlefield.

On July the 18th, 1936, General Franco,

the supreme chief of the Canary Islands

and commander-in-chief of the armies of Morocco,

rose up against the Republic.

The French government sent Malraux

to evaluate the scope of the rebellion.

[gentle playful music]

The writer landed in a capital on high alert.

Militiamen in blue overalls

had armed themselves with hunting rifles or antique guns.

On the plazas, loud speakers broadcast news

from around the country, and the news was bad.

[people shouting]

In three days the Fascists

had conquered more than a third of Spain.

[heavy marching footsteps]

A steady stream of trucks armed with rifles and machine guns

flooded the streets.

There were those that belonged to the Assault Guard,

the Republicans,

or the Trotskyites of the Marxist Worker's Party.

But it was the anarchists of the CNT

who got the most cheers, for they had just saved Barcelona,

and were leaving to mount an assault

on cities conquered by the Fascists.

[crowd cheering]

[Malraux speaking in foreign language]

Malraux veritably gushed about the war in Spain,

and soon got carried away.

The day after the insurrection,

the Spanish Prime Minister

had sent the French government a distress telegram.

Meanwhile, Franco had appealed to Mussolini and Hitler,

who quickly dispatched bombers and war planes.

Weakened by the conservative opposition,

Leon Blum had aligned with the British position

of non-intervention.

The French Popular Front

would not come to the rescue of its Spanish sister.

Gide asked a few questions,

but was quickly swept up by Malraux's monologue,

which he punctuated with big, graceful

and descriptive hand gestures

that were worthy of a bullfighter's flourishes.

As the meal wore on, Gide lost ground.

He was overpowered by Malraux's presence.

His only concern was not appearing stupid

in the company of this brilliant younger man.

Besides, what really interested him about Malraux

was not his thoughtful interpretation

of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism,

or the importance of the Moscow trials being kept a secret.

No, what Gide wanted to know

was the state of Andre and Clara's relationship.

[bird chirping] [gentle music]

Were they still in love?

Would they split up?

What was the name of the pilot Clara was smitten with?

Where would Andre sleep tonight?

[hearts kissing]

Gide was a gossip who loved starting rumors.

If he learned, for instance,

that Malraux was meeting his mistress

Josette Clotis after dinner,

all of literary Paris was sure to know too.

[drums rolling]

Malraux had been looking for planes and pilots

ever since the war started.

His tenacious ability to overcome any obstacle,

his contacts at the Air Ministry, his wife Clara's support,

and the Spanish Republic's gold all worked in his favor.

In eight days, he had managed to buy several aircraft

and to hire a handful of pilots.

[phone rings]

[drums rolling]

In August, he was named Coronel of the Republican Army.

[airplane engine puttering]

His mission was to train

and command a squadron of volunteers

based in Cuatro Vientos, 10 kilometers Southwest of Madrid.

And so the squadron Espana was born.

It was made up of Italians, Spaniards, Germans and Russians.

They were all adventurers

and several were truly devoted to the cause.

The crews did not speak the same language.

[airplane engine puttering]

Many of the planes were secondhand.

[airplane engines humming]

There were no flags, ranks or uniforms.

Everyone was on a first-name basis.

Instead of the three-finger salute,

the soldiers used a raised fist and a hearty "Salud!"

Salud!

The Coronel was dressed in a tie

and often a cap.

He was a reflection of the unit he commanded,

more anarchist than commander.

On August the 17th,

the Coronel saw combat for the first time.

The squadron's mission was to hold back the fascist column,

which was getting dangerously close to Madrid.

They had to watch out for anti-aircraft artillery,

and fly for as long as possible above the cloud cover.

The aircraft had no bomb launchers,

so they had to make do with their hands.

The bay doors swung open,

and the men braced themselves as the wind whipped inside.

[loud explosions]

There was a series of explosions.

[loud explosions]

The fascist column had been stopped.

The Battle of Medellin

was the first to be won by the Republican Air Force.

[loud explosion]

[gentle music] [car engine puttering]

While Malraux fought in Spain,

Gide was putting the finishing touches on his own bomb,

which he had been tweaking since his return from the USSR.

He hoped to publish it soon.

The book said that he had made a mistake.

Seen from up close,

the land of socialism was a hell on earth.

The Moscow Trials, which had just begun,

made for an even darker picture.

For the writer, they were comparable to the trials

the Nazis brought against Communists

after the Reichstag fire.

Despite this terrible realization,

Gide and all his friends asked the following question:

Should it be published?

Was it the right time?

Most of his entourage recommended he put it off.

The book would be used against Spain,

where Fascists and Communists were facing off.

One final argument:

Hitler's victory and the threat of fascism

made supporting the USSR a moral obligation.

It was the only country capable of standing up

to Germany's military might.

Gide was ambivalent,

so he sent the writer Pierre Herbart to Spain

with instructions to show Andre Malraux proofs of the book.

[light footsteps]

[light dramatic music]

Herbart landed in Barcelona before rejoining Albacete,

where Malraux was stationed.

A strange atmosphere permeated the city,

a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

The population was awaiting the Battle of Madrid.

[light playful music]

In a cafe in Albacete,

surrounded by International Brigade volunteers

who had been arriving from all over Europe,

and military advisors sent by Moscow,

Malraux read the proofs of Andre Gide's book.

[suspenseful music]

[people talking]

He had reached his verdict before the last page.

The work could prove harmful to the Soviets,

who had armed Spain.

It must not be published.

Herbert rushed home to Paris, but he arrived too late.

On the morning of November the 5th,

after making his final corrections to the proofs

and without waiting for Malraux's opinion,

Gide had sent them to his publisher.

[gentle playful music]

Moscow launched its first counterstrike.

"Pravda" informed its readers that, during his journey,

the great writer Andre Gide had seduced a young man

who was subsequently deported to Siberia.

In Germany, the Nazis made the writer

of the white knight of the anti-Communist struggle.

In France, the Communist press had a field day,

while the Right celebrated.

Shame and despair.

[gentle music]

The reactions were never tepid,

no matter what side they came from.

With "Return from the USSR,"

Gide, who was neither a surrealist nor a militant,

nor a politician, became one of the first writers

to question the true nature of the Soviet regime.

Six months and more than 150,000 copies later,

Gide published "Afterthoughts on My Return from the USSR."

He had resumed writing after the Moscow Trial.

In his first book, he had allowed himself a few overtures.

In "Afterthoughts," he closed all the doors.

"The USSR is not what we had hoped it would be,

what it promised to be, what it still strives to appear.

It has betrayed all of our hopes.

If we cannot resign ourselves to losing them altogether,

We must place them elsewhere."

[rapid gunfire]

Photographers, journalists and writers

arrived in Spain from around the world to bear witness.

They shadowed fighters around Madrid,

which was being bombarded day and night.

[people yelling]

Robert Capa and Gerda were there.

George Orwell also joined the fray.

Others fought with their pens,

including Klaus Mann and his sister Erika,

Pablo Neruda and Anna Seghers.

Capa and Gerda often went to visit Hemingway

in the war-torn Casa Del Campo near the university.

Sent to Spain by an American newspaper syndicate,

Hemingway became the highest paid

war correspondent in history,

and an extraordinary symbol for the besieged Republic.

He also met Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens,

whose film "The Spanish Earth"

Hemingway would write the narration for.

[people shouting]

[horn blows]

By that time, Gerda was signing photos

under her own pseudonym, Gerda Taro.

She was lively, cheerful, and magnificently brave.

All the war reporters she frequented were in love with her.

And she played games with them.

She also played games with Capa, and it made him miserable.

While he went tracking down war's many faces,

the one that haunted him most

belonged to the woman he loved.

They spent time in Barcelona and in Bilbao,

and in the mountains between Almeria and Grenada.

Nimble and quick,

he got as close as possible to the battlefield

thanks to his 35 millimeter camera

and he revolutionized war photography.

Meanwhile, despite his best efforts,

she loved him less than he hoped.

Photography brought them closer.

"Ce soir," Aragon's newspaper,

published their photo spreads

along with "Vu," "Regards," and "Life" magazine.

They were sometimes signed Capa, sometimes Capa and Taro.

But when Gerda asked for her independence,

Robert had no choice but to agree.

In February 1937, after Malaga fell to the fascists,

the last two planes of the Espana Squadron

rechristened the Andre Malraux Squadron,

took off to protect villagers fleeing

before Franco's columns.

[airplane roaring]

The first aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing.

The second was ambushed by a pack of Italian fighters.

[rapid gunfire]

[loud crash]

[airplane roaring]

[loud crash]

[gentle music]

The Andre Malraux Squadron was no more.

What was Picasso doing

while his country was being ravaged by war?

He had made a permanent home in the studio

at the Rue des Grands Augustins.

The artist led a quiet life.

He received his dealers and his models,

his friends and mistresses.

[woman giggling]

Close friends were allowed into the master bedroom,

where he would linger as late as possible lounging in bed,

opening the mail and reading the morning papers.

[lively 30s music]

[dog barks]

He would fill his coat pockets with stones,

chestnuts, lighters, buttons and pencils

scavenged along the streets and wharves of Paris.

Then he would go home to work

until the arrival of Dora Maar,

who lived only a short walk away.

[lively 30s music]

Picasso was obviously moved by the drama

tearing his country apart.

He was extremely generous with other Spanish artists,

Catalonians in particular, who came to him for help.

[door bell ringing]

The Republican government commissioned Picasso

to create a work for the Spanish pavilion

at the Exposition Universelle of 1937.

The painter agreed, but lacked inspiration.

Paul Eluard had spoken to him a great deal about Spain,

describing the atrocities committed by Franco

against the civilian populations there.

On two copper plates, Picasso engraved 14 drawings

which he entitled "Sueno y Mentira de Franco"

or "The Dream and Lie of Franco."

But this hardly qualified as a finished artwork.

[light dramatic music]

On April the 26th, 1937, everything changed.

On April the 26th, 1937,

a plane appeared in the sky over Guernica,

a small town in the Basque country.

It was a German Heinkel of the Condor Legion.

At half past four in the afternoon,

the plane dropped its payload of bombs.

[airplane engine roaring]

The Heinkel returned later, this time with friends.

The squadron destroyed the village

one neighborhood at a time,

along with all the surrounding farms

within a 10-kilometer radius.

The Luftwaffe had used Guernica

to conduct its first experiment in total war,

bombing primary targets and strafing secondary ones.

Four hours of terror and 50 tons of explosives later,

more than 1,000 civilians were dead.

[light dramatic music]

The village was of no particular strategic importance.

Franco's objective

was to demoralize the civilian population.

Meanwhile, Germany and the Condor Legion,

the artisans of the massacre,

wanted to test new weaponry for the war to come.

Read all about it!

This mass murder sparked a wave of outrage

throughout the world.

[melancholy music]

Four days after the bombing of Guernica,

Aragon's Communist daily "Ce soir"

published photos of the massacre on the front page.

Picasso saw the newspaper.

[gentle music]

It triggered something in him.

[paper crinkling]

On May the 1st, Picasso set to work.

[page turning]

[pencil scribbling]

He made the first studies

of what would become 100 studies for the work,

all photographed by Dora Maar.

[pencil scribbling]

[page turning]

They represented panicked people, mauled and screaming.

[paper crinkling]

Drawing upon drawing fell to the floor.

Picasso tried to introduce a few touches of color,

but eventually gave up and chose black and white.

[ominous music]

Picasso remained in a kind of creative frenzy

for the next several days,

adding to the mountain of sketches and failed attempts.

On May the 9th, a first composition appeared on paper.

[upbeat music]

[blade sawing]

On the 11th, he hung a giant canvas

on the wall of the workshop,

angling it slightly so that it fit vertically.

Perched on a ladder,

he equipped himself with long-handled brushes.

He began to paint.

[upbeat music]

By early June, the work was completed.

[camera clicks]

[people talking]

On July the 12th, 1937, "Guernica" was exhibited

in the Spanish pavilion of the Exposition Universelle.

The public found the work upsetting and disorienting.

Many considered the painting abstruse.

The Republicans were baffled.

The Communists were only moderately appreciative.

But the artist couldn't care less.

Once the work was finished and exhibited,

he agreed to let it tour around the world

on the condition that any revenue

would be donated to the Republic.

And he decided never to return to Spain

so long as freedom had not been restored.

[gentle bright music]

Then, letting his defenders and detractors

cross swords without him, he climbed into his Hispano-Suiza

and drove Dora Maar, Paul Eluard and Nusch

back down to Mougins for the summer,

forgetting all about the bombing of Bilbao.

[woman joyfully screaming]

[loud explosion]

[rapid gunfire]

[man yells]

In July 1937,

while Capa returned to Paris to sell the couple's photos,

Gerda was covering a vast Republican offensive

launched in the direction of the city of Brunete,

northeast of Madrid.

[loud explosions]

Gerda wanted her photos to prove to the world

that non-intervention was a myth

and that the German and Italian troops

were solidly supporting fascists.

[rapid gunfire]

[bomb screeching]

[loud explosions]

Through her viewfinder,

the photographer captured the glare of bombs,

the mortal dance of airplanes,

and the sight of men falling beneath bullets.

She also documented the slow agony of the Republican troops.

[gentle music]

[rapid gunfire]

[loud explosion]

[foreboding music]

On July the 25th,

Gerda stood by the side of a road to Madrid.

She was supposed to send her photos

before returning to Paris the following day to join Capa.

Gerda waved down a passing car.

There were wounded in the backseat,

so the young photographer jumped onto the footboard.

The driver pulled away.

Some way down the road, a tank appeared.

The car swerved out of the way,

but the tank swiped Gerda's side.

[melancholy music]

She was brought to an American hospital,

where she was operated on that very night.

She asked that Capa and the staff of "Ce soir" be informed.

[melancholy music]

[faint heart beating]

She died the following day at dawn.

She was 27 years old.

[steam hissing]

Three days later, at eight o'clock in the morning,

Gerda's flower-bedecked coffin

approached the Austerlitz station.

Robert Capa watched the approaching train.

[steam hisses]

Soon after, he fled to Amsterdam

to mourn his great love in solitude.

On Christmas Eve 1938,

the fascists launched their final offensive

against the North of the country.

After their triumph at Ebro,

the fascists traveled up the coastline towards Barcelona.

[gentle playful music]

The Republicans had to get out

before the French border closed.

[dog barking]

Thousands of them took to the roads on foot

or in broken-down, overloaded trucks.

An official motorcade crossed Barcelona for Le Perthus

transporting works by Goya, Velasquez and Titian

that the government was sending to Geneva.

[door slams]

Josette Clotis and Malraux climbed into one of these cars.

At their feet lay a cardboard box

and some bags containing the last reels of a film.

It was a movie Malraux had been shooting

for the Republicans in Barcelona

amidst the bombings, power cuts, and food shortages.

Its purpose was to let the entire world know

that non-intervention was a mistake.

But the film wasn't finished yet.

Only two-thirds of the scenario had been shot.

They would finish the vital parts,

shoot pickups and retakes, in the south of France.

They would edit in studios near Paris.

[marching music]

[horse neighs]

On January the 28th, 1939,

Andre Malraux and Josette crossed the French border

at Le Perthus along with 140,000 refugees

who would see the last of their hopes

die in the French camps.

[gentle music]

[people talking]

On February the 10th,

Franco's troops sealed the entire border.

On the 27th, France and Great Britain

recognized the Franco regime.

Madrid fell on March the 28th.

On April the 1st, 1939, the war against Spain ended.

[dramatic music]

World War II was about to begin.

[gentle playful music]