Could there be a Hollywood inspiration behind Picasso's 'Guernica'?

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http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Could/there/be/Hollywood/inspiration/behind/Picasso/s/Guernica/elpepueng/20110912elpeng_3/Ten

Pablo Picasso was not at a high point in his life when he painted Guernica in May of 1937. The Civil War was devastating Spain and World War II was knocking at the doors of a ravaged Europe. Only the strong insistence of the government of Prime Minister Juan Negrín convinced him to accept the request for the Spanish Pavilion at the World Exposition in Paris. Negrín, the last president of the Republic, reportedly said: "If we have Picasso in heart and soul, the impact will be greater than a battle won against the fascists on the frontline." He wasn't wrong - the impact of the 349.3cm-by-776.6cm painting was enormous. Even today, as the 30th anniversary of its arrival in Spain on September 10, 1981 is celebrated, the work is embedded on the retina of our times.

"It is in the immobile figures where the coincidence can be seen. It is when the action stops that you can recognize the figures in the painting"

But Guernica and its symbolism, a subject on which the painter never wanted to elaborate, continue to arouse questions, reflection and research. The latter has been the work of Spanish photography director José Luis Alcaine, who will receive the Cinema Academy's Gold Medal on October 4 in the Reina Sofía museum, precisely where the painting has been on show since 1992.

Alcaine, a master of light who has worked on films such as Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In (2011) and Víctor Erice's The South (1982), believes Picasso's main inspiration was, in fact, the cinema, and in particular, a sequence of not more than five minutes from the film A Farewell to Arms by director Frank Borzage, an anti-war drama inspired by Ernest Hemingway's novel that premiered in Paris in 1933. Taken scene by scene, the movie has surprising similarities with the painting's main figures - and not Goya's The Shootings of May 3 nor Ruben's The Massacre of the Innocents , both formerly believed to have inspired the work. No, Alcaine has pinpointed a source of inspiration as colloquial as Hollywood itself, which, given the capacity of Guernica to exponentially expand all that surrounds it, is sure to cause a major debate in the art world.