The two versions

“When Joris Ivens went to Spain in 1937 to shoot a documentary about the civil war, he had a completed script in his case. Lillian Hellman and Archibald Mc Leish, his colleagues from Contemporary historians, had written it as a cue for a film which would reproduce the political reality of a Spain racked by civil war. […] During one of the weeks in Paris, when he was watching the filmed material, Ivens met Ernest Hemingway, who had been involved in the project, collaborating on the daily shots near Fuenteduena. The encounter with Hemingway had a decisive effect on the form of the documentary.

Orson Welles read the commentary by Hemingway on the advice of Archibald Mc Leigh. Ivens was not dissatisfied with the recording. On the contrary, it seemed to him that the text and the voice complemented each other. However, it was not liked by the colleagues from Contemporary historians.

More than anything else, Lillian Helman found Welles’s voice too theatrical and too perfect for the documentary strength of the image. Her suggestion to have the text read by Hemingway was followed and the result, according to Ivens, was stupefying. The emotion produced by Hemingway’s voice during the recording gave the text an emotional charge and profundity which Welles’s voice was not capable of providing.

Spanish Earth got its place in history with Hemingway’s voice whilst the only copy with Welles’s commentary, preserved by George Eastman House in Rochester was given to the Nederlands Filmmuseum in 1993.

What we know of the film’s production may be confirmed from the comparative visions of the two versions: the texts of the two editions are identical. However the second recording was carried out because the tone of the voice was not liked and not because there was a desire to modify the text. There are only the tiniest modifications in Welles’s version.

In any case, there is no doubt that the two versions are completely different. This is so because of the sound and the use of the voices of Welles and Hemingway. Welles’s voice, modulated, belongs to a professional actor, expert at reading any text without difficulty. The beautiful, powerful voice of an actor. Hemingway’s voice is altogether another thing: deeper, raucous and a little monotonous. It is a voice which sometimes, involuntarily changes key and which can never rule out the impression that he is reading from a written text. The voice of a commentator who speaks of his relationship with the events in a clear and comprehensible way.

One thing certain is that Ivens was satisfied with Welles’s voice, but that he chose a recording on the advice of Lillian Hellman.

It seems logical that Ivens preferred Hemingway’s recording to that of Welles, on account of the authenticity and complicity of the former. But today, almost sixty years after the realisation of the film, Hemingway’s voice, above all for its emotional impact, seems more dated and propagandistic than that of Welles. Welles’s commentary style, uninvolved and detached, is more modern because he approaches it more as a film than as a reality. His commentary is more sober, and it probably seems better to the “modern” viewer. Welles’s voice makes it possible to build a bridge over time. Welles has outlived Hemingway”. (Sonja Snoek)