The 400 Million
(1939)
Director:
Joris Ivens, John Fernhout
Writer:
Joris Ivens, Dudley Nichols
Cast:
Fredric March, Morris Carnovsky, Sidney Lumet
Joris Ivens’s wartime documentary of China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion, cross-cutting civilian exodus and bombing with the Nationalist state’s mobilization—schools, industry, dispersed war production, foreign relief—and guerrilla fighting. Framing an ancient nation of “400 million,” it contrasts tradition with modernization and closes on the unresolved question of victory.