But if the Netflix series is weak, the one in its catalog Amazon Prime Video (and also Filmin: what a disappointment) is worse. Much worse. But of not having where to catch it. It is enough to cite two of the authors cited in the bibliography that accompanies the credits of the series directed by Pablo Chamorro: Pío Moa and César Vidal.
To begin with, ‘The Great History of the Spanish Civil War’ begins with a false display of equanimity. “There is nothing that some did not do and the others did not.” Well, some carried out a coup and others did not, some killed twice as much and with legal and ecclesiastical blessing from the first to the last dead, etc, etc. But it is misleading: the documentary is not impartial where there is no possible impartiality, but reproduces one after the other the arguments of neo-Franco revisionism. The republic was a violent and revolutionary regime from the first day, the first coup was the 1934 revolution and the military had no choice but to put order, the Popular Front was not a democratically elected and legitimate government because there was a push and he lost the elections in votes (adding center, right and whoever passed by helps to balance the numbers) …
In 1939, when the war ended, the dictatorship did not begin but … “for all Spaniards, the immense effort to live in peace on the ruins of Spain.”
Considering the content, the formal aspects shouldn’t matter as much. But the concatenation of 12 chapters with only a voiceover and a desolate poverty of archive images is embarrassing. The same burning church serves to illustrate the arrival of the republic, the October and July revolution of 1936. The same assault guard gallops through a Madrid street in all chapters: until in their umpteenth appearance they invert the image to hide (the letters of the shops upside down leave no room for doubt). Dispensable no: to avoid.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com