Que Viva Mexico

The general plan of this film is strongly reminiscent of two films that Walt Disney made at the request of the State Department during World War II, namely SALUDOS AMIGOS and THE THREE CABALLEROS. The content here is serious and dramatic, the Disney approach is funny entertainment in cartoon form, but similarities are unmistakable.

It is also my understanding that the U.S. State Department sent Orson Welles to Brazil to make a film. Reels and Reels of film were shot, the funding fathers were not given progress reports that convinced them that anything like they wanted would ever result, and the funding was cut off. The fate of the reels and reels of Welles shot film seems quite similar to what happened to Que Viva Mexico.

As a personal evaluation and comment, I would like to add to what others have written, that I saw nothing in this film that could possibly be construed as blatant propaganda. Great films like CASABLANCA and GONE WITH THE WIND have a strong propaganda element to them, the first one, wartime "Us are Good Guys, Nazis are Bad" and the second one "Slavery and the Ku Klux Klan were the good guys, Dixie and the Old South were just wonderful". QUE VIVA Mexico has less propaganda.

Considering that Que Viva Mexico was (mostly) made by Sergei Eisenstein, and funded by Upton Sinclair, the most happy surprise is that the film isn't overloaded with the kind of communist/socialist propaganda that would be immediately expected. It's not that this would be a bad thing in the technical sense; Eisenstein, on the front of being a pure visionary, couldn't be stopped no matter how thin he stretched himself for his means as a director who had to stay to party/country guidelines. And for Sinclair, the meatier the context the better the hyperbole. But with Que Viva Mexico! we get a view of the people and customs like out of a measured fever dream. We're given more-so the customs and the traditions, the practice of a marriage, the bullfights, some of the context of the history behind those 'Day of the Dead' parades. Only here and there are any blatant pleas seen and heard loud and clear (mostly involving the poorest of the poor in the lot).

Actually, it could be something, in a sense, comparable to Werner Herzog in attempting the documentary form. It's not quite fiction, but it's presenting documentary in a stylized manner, where things aren't simply stock footage but very much a set-up of the construction of drama in the scenes and scene-location specific shots and angles. And like Herzog, Eisenstein has a poet's eye for visions that many might only see in the most remote history books or travelogues. While the accompanying narration for Que Viva Mexico is a little on the creaky end, there's no lack of splendor for the senses as far as getting an eye full of carefully picked locals (i.e. the girl Concepcion for the marriage scenes) or for mixing real documentary footage of the bullfight with careful constructed shots of the bullfighter before and after the fact. Even the music plays a nifty role in the dramatization of events. And here and there, especially as the film rolls along in its last third, a subtle sensation of the surreal drifts into the proceedings.

Unfortunately, like It's All True for Orson Welles, Que Viva Mexico remains something of a carefully plucked fragment from a lost bit in the director's career. It's a minor marvel, and certainly more than a curiosity for the die-hard documentary or Mexican history buff, but it's stayed obscurer than Eisenstein's more infamous pieces (Potemkin, Alexander Nevksy) for a reason. Despite all the best intentions to simply reveal the cultural day-to-day workings and a little of the socio-political context of the Conquistadors' impact, it's a cool curiosity at best.

I was going to skip this because Eisenstein never finished it. He filmed for months without completing what he wanted. He had to return to the Soviet Union, the film got impounded, and he had no access to the footage for the rest of his life. After his death, his codirector on October: Ten Days that Shook the World and The General Line, Grigori Aleksandrov got access to the footage and put together a short feature that approximated what Eisenstein was supposed to have wanted. This is that result. It reminds me of some of Orson Welles's abandoned projects, mostly Mr. Arkadin, in that it should be Eisenstein's, but no matter how hard you squint: it's not going to be.

It's supposed to be the history of Mexico, and considering that Eisenstein shot somewhere between 30 and 50 hours of footage, I doubt it was supposed to be only 90 minutes long. I mean...I don't expect a 20 hour film out of that, but since he wasn't even done filming and considering the large scope intended, I suspect he was going for a multi-part film, like how he originally started in the Soviet Union and had planned a series of films detailing the history of Russia from the revolution of 1905 to the October Revolution in 1917. That was never supposed to be a 90 minute film. It was supposed to be a series of films, and I suspect that what became Que Viva Mexico as supposed to be like that.

However, what Aleksandrov quickly threw together in a few months was a 90-minute long film, something that reminded more of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno with far less behind the scenes interviews (Aleksandrov does introduce and exit the film in small segments in an editing bay).

So, the story of Mexico is handled through vignettes. The opening, essentially pre-Spanish, shows local Mexican natives sitting on Mayan temples and mourning a dead person. The second is still pre-Spanish about the matriarchal organization of society, portraying a perfect native society where no one ever dies, no one ever fights, and no one ever has conflict (a Rousseau influence on communist thought which I've always found interesting since the Soviet experiment early was all about industry and wealth of the modern world). The third is all about a bull fight, a cultural introduction by the Spanish, and it's probably the most exciting part of the film. It's all done through editing of what looks to be predominantly a real bullfight, and Eisenstein just follows the action expertly. This feels like classic Eisenstein, Aleksandrov mimicking well the deceased Soviet filmmaker's editing techniques.

The next is the longest about a young peasant in Spanish controlled Mexico before the Mexican revolution who has to take his bride to the local landowner (there are obvious visual echoes of the main kulak in The General Line). The landowner steals the bride, kidnapping her to do with as he wills, and the peasant leads a small, unsuccessful rebellion against the landowner, leading to the peasant being buried alive up to his neck until he dies as horses stomp on him.

An interesting aspect of this is that Eisenstein shot silent. He shot in 1931, two years into the sound era, using funding from American sources, and he either couldn't or chose to not use sound. Since so much was filmed outside, it might have been a cost/benefit ratio aspect where getting sound outside with the primitive equipment, even top of the line stuff, was so hard and expensive to do well. So, in order to capture the "reality" of the situation, and to make the most of a relatively small budget, he chose to shoot silently. I only bring it up because the early sound era is my favorite period in film history.

So, the portraits of Mexican life are interesting in their idyllic manifestations. The bull fight is exciting. The story of the plight of the peasant looking for his girl is good ole fashioned underdog against the odds storytelling (with a downer ending because propaganda against the ancien regime). It's more of a fractured curio, a remnant of an incomplete film, partially reconstructed by the director's friend and compatriot in the Soviet film industry (another Soviet director, Sergei Bondarchuck, the director of War and Peace, provides some narration as well), than a completed film. However, on that scale, I actually found it quite interesting as a portrait of a production that will never see completion. Part entertaining, part informative, Que Viva Mexico is quite worth discovery for Eisenstein completists.

Que Viva Mexico is an interesting (reconstruction of a) film by Sergei Eisenstein, the director of so many masterpieces. In fact, of all that I have seen, this is the only non-masterpiece of the bunch. Even the reconstruction of Beshin Meadow I like more. Que Viva Mexico is a semi-documentary. Most of it is uninteresting and, unlike Eisenstein's other films and Tisse's other cinematography, poorly composed. The only parts of real interest come near the end, with the rebellion, something that Eisenstein was used to creating on screen. There is a great gunfight with a woman participating, a precursor to Alexander Nevsky's Vasilisa, and there is a great scene where some rebels are buried up to the shoulders underground and then trampled by horses (by far the best scene in the film). The Day of the Dead celebration is also very interesting. There is also a bullfight that will demonstrate just how cruel bullfighting is.

I do have to complain about the reconstruction that I watched. This was supposed to be a silent film, I believe. The narration I did not mind, for Eisenstein would have had to find a way to communicate what the narrator did anyway. And the music is good, often great. But I object to the insertion of diagetic sound effects, like guns shooting and horses galloping. This is ridiculous. Obviously the only people who are ever going to see this film are Eisenstein enthusiasts, so to try to sell it to the public as a sound movie is ridiculous. Why?

Film buffs know the history of this lost all too well- Eisenstein came to Hollywood to work for Paramount, Paramount and Sergei never really saw eye to eye. Before giving up on making an American Production, Upton Sinclair invited Eisenstein to make a feature film about Mexico. Eisenstein shot miles of footage, and the money and interest from backers ran out. Eisenstein was forced to return to his native Russia without his Mexican footage. The footage was cut together by others at about this time to make THUNDER OVER MEXICO, and they did not follow Eisenstein's editing notes (They simply made an edit every four seconds. Watch the film and count, you'll see what I mean...) This version, completed by his associates 30 years after his 1948 death comes close to Eisenstein's intent, but without Eisensetin at the editing board, something is missing.

This resulting video is entralling. His incredible shot compositions (which influence me to no end as a film-maker) are all there. There's one scene, which involves a shoot-out reminds us what a John Wayne western directed by Eisenstein would of lookied like.