THE GOOD FIGHT

Director Noel Buckner, Mary Dore, Sam Sills / 1984 / USA

"Most of the training we got was speeches." The 3,200 Americans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1936, who voluntarily put their lives at risk to defend the Spanish Republic against the combined might of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, were totally unprepared for the war they encountered. The Good Fight includes interviews with eleven Brigade veterans who describe in deeply personal terms (with a noticeable vitality and sense of idealism), why they went to Spain and how that decision was to affect the rest of their lives. Rare archival footage includes newsreels, stills, and a clip from Blockade - written by John Howard Lawson (later to become one of the 'Hollywood Ten'), and featuring Henry Fonda as a Spanish peasant fighting Franco.

"The members of the Lincoln Brigade, many of whom had been active in leftist political groups, were not rich kids out on a lark to defend the status quo. They were poor as well as rich, women as well as men, black as well as white - all convinced that something important in the evolution of the world's political consciousness was being destroyed in Spain."

- New York Times

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