The locals are left to remove the decorations and pay for the expenses with their personal belongings, including the flamenco impresario who gives up a gold ring given to him by the Americans in Boston.

Marshall!, Berlanga publicly claimed to offer a human picture of what the Spanish peasant, interested more in crops than in politics, might feel about the American people and their role in the post-war world.

[4] Berlanga chose to film in the small village of Guadalix de la Sierra, fifty miles north of Madrid.

received positive reviews by critics and was immensely popular among Spanish audiences, garnering enough praise to gain entry to the Cannes Film Festival.

[8] According to Peter Besas, a Madrid correspondent for Variety, the film was denied an award at Cannes when a judge, the actor Edward G. Robinson, under threat from Senator Joseph McCarthy, vetoed it as anti-American.

[3] In 1993, film critic Stephen Holden observed that "although more than 40 years old, this funny compassionate little fable has an ebullience and freshness that transcend its historical context.