Abstract
El Cid is an epic motion picture recounting the life of Rodrigo Diaz, known as ‘El Cid’, the great medieval Spanish hero, released in 1960. Produced by Samuel Bronston, an American independent filmmaker based in Spain, El Cid was made with the logistical and financial support of Francisco Franco. But a number of the most important people involved in making the film—including the director and the chief screenwriter—were political liberals. Freeman argues that as a result the film carries, at one and the same time, propaganda messages extolling Franco and championing the Civil Rights movement in the USA.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to David Smith, Laila Haidarali and Andrew Priest for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
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Freeman, T.S. (2019). Filming a Legend: Anthony Mann’s El Cid (1961). In: Freeman, T., Smith, D. (eds) Biography and History in Film. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89408-9_2
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