Que Viva Mexico

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?

If you know about Sergei Eisenstein's "Que Viva Mexico! - Da zdravstvuyet Meksika!", you probably know that Eisenstein ran out of money and left the movie incomplete, so collaborator Grigoriy Aleksandrov organized the footage as close to how Eisenstein envisioned it. I personally thought that it was a fascinating movie, but one of many films where they throw so much at you that it's really hard to digest.

Knowing that Eisenstein met with the execs at Paramount Pictures but didn't see eye to eye with them, I get the feeling that he may have made this movie in part to indict US involvement in Latin America. As we Americans were supposed to view our southern neighbor as the land of sombreros and senoritas, he wanted to show that there was a more serious-intellectual side, and of course the indigenous aspect.

In my opinion, the combination of the Day of the Dead sequence and the rebellion at the end really constitute the movie's strength, sort of like the rebellion in "Battleship Potemkin". Much of the rest of the film consists of very exaggerated facial expressions (the Russians love those, don't they?). But either way, I still recommend the movie as an important installation in cinematic history, exactly the sort of thing to show in film classes. If anything surprised me, it was that they were allowed to show nudity; I always sort of assume that no major movie in any country was allowed to back then (but don't get me wrong: some of those women were really hot!).

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.

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.

Although its coscenarist and director, Sergei M. Eisenstein did not live to complete "Que Viva Mexico?," the Russian who reconstructed this 1979 version for Mosfilm, Grigori Alexandrov, co-authored the film and worked closely with Eisenstein in 1931 and 1932 in the filming of the footage ultimately fashioned into several pictures, including butchered versions released by Sol Lesser and even some Bell and Howell documentaries! At some point, the man who initially commissioned the movie, Upton Sinclair, donated all or almost all of Eisenstein's footage to the Museum of Modern Art, which made it available as it was shot (take by take by take) in a "study" film. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that an edited version has appeared in video, and for that, Eisenstein fans and lovers of cinema should be jubilant! Even if Alexandrov had cut the footage completely out of order and in a form that would make Sergei Mikhailovich roll over in his grave, we can appreciate the dynamic power of the images, so ingeniously composed and photographed by Eisenstein with his longtime cameraman, Eduard Tisse. Of course, Eisenstein's remarkable scenario could never be realized EXACTLY as he wrote it, but Alexandrov did an admirable job all the same. In whatever form we see it, Eisenstein's footage reminds us that this aborted masterpiece, had he been able to complete the movie, would have been just that -- one of the greatest motion pictures of all time. It is a tragedy for film lovers that Eisenstein could not obtain the negative from the Sinclair cabal (which included the American author's Pasadena, California Standard Oil cronies!) at the time. But this 1979 version is better than nothing, and a lot better than many so-called movies churned out by Hollywood today. The film should be studied by every student of cinema, and especially photographers and editors. In truth, Eisenstein probably was planning as many as six different films, but Sinclair sent his alcoholic brother-in-law to ride herd on the Russians, to the result that the "plug was pulled" on the production short of its completion by Eisenstein. Frankly, had the latter managed to complete the movie and edit it himself, I am convinced film buffs would put it right up there with "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca" (i.e. among the greatest masterpieces of cinema). I recommend the film highly, if only as a reminder of what might have been!