THE CINEMATIC IMAGE OF MEXICO IN THE FILM QUE VIVA MEXICO! BY SERGEI EISENSTEIN
Authors:   Dostoevsky Omsk State University, SUKHIKH E.V. 
Published: December 2024

Mexico has long been attractive to Russian culture. But, perhaps, only Sergei Eisenstein, who made a real “film discovery” of Mexico, felt a special kinship with this country. Mexico was the final part of Eisenstein’s overseas business trip to Europe and America. For more than a year, the director, together with Grigory Alexandrov and Eduard Tisse, worked on a grandiose epic. Eisenstein was completely captivated by this film. However, the director was not destined to fully realize his idea, his Que Viva Mexico! was released many years later in the editing version by Grigory Alexandrov. Eisenstein’s co-author tried to follow his plan as closely as possible; besides, the voiceover text for the film is based solely on the recordings and the script of the Master himself. Combining elements of fiction and documentary films, motley ethnographic material, lyrical and dramatic scenes, highly social paintings and philosophical reflections, photographs of that time and drawings by Eisenstein, the film became multi-genre and diverse, like Mexico itself. According to the director’s concept, this is primarily an epic film depicting the history and formation of the country, its past and present, its highly distinctive character. The Prologue unfolding in Yucatan begins with the cult of death that reigned in ancient Mexico and was embodied in the bas-reliefs and friezes of pagan temples. The first novel “Sandunga” was shot in the south of Mexico, in Tehuantepec, the kingdom of the matriarchy. This place attracted Eisenstein with its bright exoticism. The next novel “Fiesta” includes two episodes: a celebration in honor of Madonna Guadalupe and bullfighting. The action of the novella “Magey” takes place during the reign of dictator Porfirio Diaz and conveys the atmosphere of social tension on the eve of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. But Eisenstein failed to portray the Revolution, as Alexandrov explains, for financial reasons. The Eisenstein-Alexandrov film concludes with an epilogue dedicated to the Mexican Day of the Dead. Like the Prologue, it is devoted to the theme of death, but presents it with a more life-affirming emphasis. Recalling the European macabre plots in Saint-Saens’ Danse macabre and Hans Holbein Jr.’s Dances of Death, the author of the film emphasizes the uniqueness of the Mexican attitude to death. If the European “death dances” reminded of the futility of earthly life and the omnipotence of death, then the Mexican Day of the Dead marks a contemptuous mockery of it. We will never know what a film about Mexico would be like in Eisenstein’s version. But the unfulfilled idea of the brilliant director came to life on the screen thanks to the tremendous work of Grigory Alexandrov and his creative team. In this version, the film remained faithful to the original concept, the epic grandeur of the tasks and the plastic perfection of the frames. Inevitably, he lost a lot, but he managed to convey to the audience the main thing - Eisenstein’s sincere love for Mexico. The author declares no conflicts of interests.