¡Que Viva Mexico! - Da zdravstvuyet Meksika!

Plot synopsis:
[NOTE: This synopsis was written after multiple viewings of the online video at IMDB, 84 minutes, with an Italian sound track, which was tricky as I don't speak Italian.]The first sequence is a five minute documentary narrated by Grigori Aleksandrov. While relevant still photos are shown, we learn that in 1931, director Sergei M. Eisenstein, producer Grigori Aleksandrov and cinematographer Eduard Tisse came to USA for talks with Paramount, but no agreement resulted. This team was responsible for the successful prior films Battleship Potemkin and October. Some funding was arranged by writer Upton Sinclair, and the team went to Mexico to make a movie about its history and culture. With advice from Mexican intellectuals and artists, they traveled around Mexico and shot film. For a variety of financial and political reasons, Upton Sinclair deposited the film in Museum of Modern Art in New York for safekeeping. Eisenstein was never allowed to edit this movie. In 1979, the Soviet Union government retrieved the shot film and Grigori Aleksandrov prepared this version, using notes, sketches, and narration written by Eisenstein in addition to Aleksandrov's own recollections.The second sequence shows traces in 1931 Mexico of pre Columbian Mexico, first a montage of ancient sculptures and monuments, showing live persons whose appearance resembles the faces seen in the sculptures. Animals that appear in the sculptures, particularly birds and monkeys, are shown in their habitats. A burial ceremony appears to be quite ancient in concept. Next, there are shots of everyday life in a remote community where it seems that nothing has changed in several hundred years. The narration comments that the culture is matriarchal, with the women doing most of the daily work and selecting shelter and mates, and we see daily work and dwellings of pre-Columbian design.As we see relevant images, the narrator says that girls, starting in childhood, age about eight, work in order to save money to accumulate enough gold coins for a full necklace. When they have the full necklace, they are of marriageable age and select their own mate. Their wedding feast involves the entire village: the older matriarchs plan it, then there are costumes, food galore, dances and music. This sequence focuses on one such young woman, Concepción, her necklace, and wedding. The smiling couple is shown on a hammock, with a toddler, supposedly some years later.The third sequence, labeled FIESTA, shows details of an elaborate yearly festival in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. The narration says that these customs are a hybrid of pre Columbian elements with Spanish Catholic church teachings and traditions. Pilgrimages consist of walking on knees, sometimes real, sometimes simulated, up to the tops of hills where there are churches or shrines, many of them built precisely where pre Columbian pagan temples existed. Other male pilgrims tie their arms to Saguaro cactus beams that are carried horizontally on their shoulders as they represent Jesus on his way to his crucifixion. After the pilgrimages, there are celebrations with dances and prayers and parades. Catholic Church officials are the principal dignitaries. In the parades one can see many costumes and masks that clearly represent the Spanish Conquistadores, Cortez and his companions.The fourth sequence shows how deeply Mexicans have adopted the purely Spanish import of bullfighting as part of their own tradition. One bullfighting day in the life of a top level bullfighter is shown, beginning with his complex dressing up in costume, going to visit his mother to get her blessing, going to church to pray to the Virgin of the Macarena, patroness of bullfighters, the events and crowds at the bullring, the parade, the honoring of the Queen of the Corrida, the entrance of the bull and first sequence of passes, the picadores, the slaying of the bull, and the hats being thrown into the ring with money gifts inside the crown. The day for the bullfighter ends in a relaxing boat ride in a flower boat at the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco as he is surrounded and coddled by an admiring coterie of beauties.At this point a title card announces that we have seen Act I and Act II is next.The fifth sequence is entitled MAGUEY. The initial minutes are documentary, showing how the interior fluid of the maguey plant is harvested and transported on donkey backs to the principal buildings of a large plantation. Next, narration says we will see a dramatization of a local legend, events that supposedly happened during the years of the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, when large plantation owners behaved in the fashion of medieval feudal lords.When one of the maguey field workers wanted a bride, on the day it was handed to him by her parents, it was a required custom that the bride had to be introduced to the plantation owners before she could live on the plantation. On this occasion, the bride strikes the fancy of the owner, the young man is distracted, taken away, beaten when he protests, as his bride is raped, and confined within the plantation.The fiancé, his brother and two friends want revenge, sneak into the plantation buildings to acquire an arsenal of rifles and bullets, and an armed rebellion starts. A complicated shootout ensues, the four laborers mainly on one hand, the plantation owner and his henchmen on the other. An interesting detail is that the daughter of the owner participates.At the end of the shootout, one of the rebels has been shot dead, the other three are captured, bound, buried in the ground with only shoulders and head above ground. The leaders go away and the underlings on horses trample the helpless rebels. The captive girl, now a widow, comes to see the corpse of her fiancé.The courage of the Indians in the defense of their honor, and the cruelty of the repression presage the revolution that the country needed.At this point in the film, Alexandrov reappears, to partially narrate, while historical photos are shown, a planned sequence SOLDADERA that was to depict the important role that camp following women had during the revolutionary civil war that followed the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz. This sequence was never filmed due to a cutoff in funding.A seventh sequence labeled EPILOG shows activities during the day of the dead. Families go on picnics to cemeteries and eat and drink over the tombs of dead relatives. Children are shown munching on chocolates shaped like coffins or eating candy goodies shaped and sized as human skulls. The attitude is to make fun of death. There are joyful dances where the dancers wear skull masks. Skull mask costumes are worn representing all the main characters of Mexican history, priests, politicians, conquistadores, etc.The last few clips show children and adults removing their masks to reveal smiling faces that symbolize the promising future of a modern Mexico.

Tags: romantic, murder

Review:
This is the greatest documentary fiction I've ever seen, despite this movie was incomplete the beauty of the images is great, with a great culture you can make magic with the camera.
The Mexican people have a wonderful big culture and personally I didn't know a little things about my own country.About the part of fiction is great that this reality is happening know and the sense of revolution is present, i think that only a Russian could understand the sense of the work people.The drama and the courage of the indians in the defense of the honor and the repression is a symbol of the revolution that needs the country..
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.
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.
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).
Mexico seen through the (surprisingly) anthropological eye of Eisenstein.
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.
But with Que Viva Mexico!
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.
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.
A beautiful portrait of Mexico by a Russian genius.
Sergei Eisenstein: the master of editing, the great father of Russian cinema, a role model for other famous directors like Charlie Chaplin or Andrei Tarkovski; author of cinematic masterpieces like Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky.
Now we have his version of his Mexican adventure: "Que Viva Mexico!" an epic semi-documentary lost in time.
Eisenstein was a nobody when he arrived in the USA to plan another project, the soviet authorities didn't want him in the USSR due to his polemic point of views of the October Revolution and the czarism.
Sergei adored Mexico because of its beauty and its hospitality.
Famous Mexican painters like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and David Alfaro Siqueiros, along with his Russian partner Trotsky, helped him to inspire.
Eisenstein filmed his version of the Mexican traditions and he was very close.
As a Mexican, I didn't realized how magical these traditions were until I watched this film.
A really good film maker knows how to show the real life in a fantastic way.
"Que Viva Mexico!" highly recommendable, Mexican fellows: watch it, this is your real country..
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.
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..
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..
How do things result when we apply Russian ideas to Mexico?.
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".
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.
Eisenstein lost in Mexico..
The images are beautiful and fascinating, but it is clear to see Eisenstein was completely lost in Mexico.
Even if it would have been completed, I would bet that it would be considered one of Eisenstein's lesser works.
Que Viva Mexico is an interesting (reconstruction of a) film by Sergei Eisenstein, the director of so many masterpieces.
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.
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.
"Que Viva Mexico" About Fantasy Land.
His fascination with his own surreal idea of Mexican countrywomen walking around without shirts betrays a leering attitude toward women and an almost unbelievably patronizing attitude toward Mexico, which becomes a sort of south Pacific paradise of sexually liberated and smiling honeys.
The sequence in the maguey plantation is visually very interesting, but the narrative is about as unreal and stupid as was ever seen on film.
I have to start out by saying that i do not give this movie such a high rating based on Eisenstein's vision of the Mexican culture, but more on his amazing ability to manipulate time and space to create a new meaning.
He is able to make us believe we are watching a documentary on Mexico when all along we are watching a movie about continuous progress through revolutions (Eisenstein communist vision).
He starts his movie with a vision of proclaiming time in the episode Sandunga.
The following episode is Soldadera (which is when Eisenstein ran out of budget) which is his representation of the 1910-1920 Mexican revolution.
(He even slips a little of his ideology by representing the capitalists as the "doomed class".)This movie could easily be watched without even noticing this, but i think everyone should try to watch this and keeping in mind Eisenstein bolshevik background.
He came to Mexico being financed by a communist writer, and was received by 3 communists mural painters...there was no way this could not be a typical communist, propaganda movie.
At some times he represents wrongly Mexicans, but i truly believe its to achieve his main goal, that maybe he even did it on purpose in order to really show an evolution through time...To wrap it up; this movie, and this producer have an enormous and interesting past thats worth looking into to..
Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov and another crew member moved to USA, to work for Paramount, but the agreement never happened.
The team decided to go to Mexico to make a movie about its history and culture.
They joined some Mexican intellectuals, traveled around Mexico trying to assimilate the culture of the people, and shot film.
However, for some unexplained reason, the laboratory that revealed the films in Hollywood, kept them and sent them to a Museum in New York, and Eisenstein was never able to edit his movie.
In 1979, the Soviet Union government retrieved the fragments and Grigori Aleksandrov edited this movie, based on the notes and storyboard of Eisenstein.
"¡Que Viva Mexico!
The second part is a fiction based on the dramatic fate of a bride, submitted to the powerful farmer of the area close to her wedding day, and her fiancé, his brother and two friends trying to rescue her.
The conclusion of the story would be called ""Soldadera", the wives of the soldiers, and would be based on the revolution of Mexican people.
Unfortunately Eisenstein had no more budgets to film the rest of the story.
A great inside look at Mexican culture in the 1930s..
The movie portrays Mexican culture in a great way.
It show the history of Mexico from pre-Conquest civilization to the Mexican revolutions of the early 20th century.
Despite that, the movie is still a flawed masterpiece from Russian avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein.
The production for the film was beset by difficulties that Sergei couldn't stop.
First off, shooting for the film was delay, by the Mexican government, due to the fact, that Sergei Eisenstein's films are known for their political subversion.
The Mexican government would only allow the Soviet filmmakers entry into their country, if they agree to their condition about how the film was going to be portray.
In their agreement, the film was not to show or imply anything that could be construed as insulting to or critical of post-Revolution Mexico.
This condition meant, that Sergei's original intended to document the mythic struggle of a Mexican people in a perpetual state of unrest, would not happen.
If Sergei didn't comply with the agreement, the filmed material would be subject to censorship and taken by the Mexican government.
In the end, the movie was never molded into the film that he has intended.
Maybe it's a good thing, because Communist Propaganda driven movie, would be a harder film to watch.
Things got worse for Sergei, when lead financier, Upton Sinclair stop funding the film, due to their disagreement on how the film was going to be shot.
Upton Sinclair wanted an artistic travelogue; while Eisenstein wanted a multi-part film, almost like an anthology with each part focused on a different subculture of the Mexican peoples.
The movie was supposed to be divide into six parts: Prologue, Sandunga, Conquest, Fiesta, Magey, Soldadera and Epilogue.
The film as a whole, would have parts, base on some primal element (stone, water, iron, fire, air), and have a overlooking story of romantic as the movie moves from themes of life and death, culminating in the mockery of death.
It didn't help that his own country, the Soviet Union was turning their back, from him, due to Eisenstein's foray onto the western culture.
When Eisenstein try to defect to the United States, by entering American border, during production.
With no studio to edit his film, he was forced to return to the Soviet Union, after production, but due to his vision of communism.
In 1979, the Soviet Union government retrieved the fragments of the film, and forced assistant director, Grigori Aleksandrov to edit this movie, based on the notes and storyboard of Eisenstein.
The first one introduction gives a historical panel of Mexico and the Mexican people.
The first one introduction gives a historical panel of Mexico and the Mexican people.
This part, was well-shot and felt like a documentary.
The second part doesn't feel like a documentary at all.
The second part had a fiction story about a bride kidnap by a powerful farmer on her wedding day, and her fiancé, his brother and two friends trying to rescue her.
This part is example of avant-garde aesthetics, an exercise in form rather than documentary realism; but indirectly, recreate the Mexican culture atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the conclusion of the story was never finish, as Eisenstein had no more money to film, the rest.
While, the film still displays all of Eisenstein's revolutionary techniques.
It look good, but just think, if the film didn't have all those roadblocks.
1929: Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse headed West in search for contracts.
Nevertheless the target was Hollywood, where Eisenstein would not succeed to find a contract (neither would Leni Riefenstahl, a couple of years later).After one year, in 1930, Upton Sinclair sponsored the Soviet team for a movie about Mexico.
The movie couldn't be finished: lack of more money, lack of more time.
The guys went back to Moscow and the filmed material remained at Upton Sinclair.There are several contradictory versions about what happened and why it happened; anyway, the footage arrived eventually at Moscow, in the seventies.
Eisenstein and Tisse were dead by that time.
(¡Que viva México!).The movie has six episodes: a prologue (Tisse moving slowly the camera over pyramids, Aztec sculptures, motionless people along carved deities, a country that's extremely diverse, where all ages of history coexist, timelessly and motionlessly) - a wedding (in a place where the society is still living in matriarchate) - a religious procession (superb images again: three youngsters carrying the cross, toward three priests like Aztec masks, facing three skulls) - a corrida - a story with three young peasants killed by a landlord and buried alive (Tisse gave here a very shocking image, while one of the most powerful cinematic scenes I have ever seen) - the epilogue (a joyful festival for the All Souls Day, a fabulous celebration of the Dead).
A seventh episode was no more shot, Soldaderas, Eisenstein had in mind to focus it on women, the female Revolution soldiers.The restitution made by Aleksandrov seemed to me very honest - he didn't add anything, and, very important, he didn't edit the film - I'm sure Eisenstein would have put the episodes in parallel like in Griffith's Intolerance; Aleksandrov let them sequential, which was fortunate - one needs the genius of Griffith or Eisenstein to not fail.