Queimada

Plot synopsis:
Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) is called to the island of Queimada in the Antilles to foment a rebellion against Portuguese rule, to benefit British sugar traders. He singles out a porter named José Dolores (Evaristo Márquez) and tries to insult and humiliate him to goad him into betraying some rebellious spirit. When this eventually works, Walker beings to fashion Delores into a revolutionary leader. At the same time Walker meets with the colonial leaders (ethnic Portuguese) and encourages them to lead the revolution, lest the slaves lead the revolution on their own, which would threaten all white infrastructure, and lives, on the island. The revolution succeeds, the Portuguese are expelled, subtle power struggles ensue between the former colonials and the freed black slaves, and the future of sugar exports is uncertain. Having completed his mission, Walker returns to England.10 years later representatives from a sugar company are trying to find Walker with a business proposition. They find him in the slums of an English city, apparently not living a lifestyle becoming a gentleman of his status, his clothes notwithstanding. He is then charged with ending a rebellion on Queimada between the former slaves and the white rulers.Upon arriving on Queimada, Walker gives an expository on the phases of rebellion and truce that have transpired on the island in the last 10 years. He sends an envoy to Delores (the same leader as before) inviting him to dialogue. He also sends a familiar alcoholic drink. Delores responds by sending a wagon to a government fortification with three dead soldiers, and the alcohol, making it clear that he is not prepared to talk.Walker then sets out to destroy the rebellion. First, however, he takes the time to lecture the government leaders that the rebels are desperate and destitute while the government forces are comfortable and have much to lose. This makes the rebel guerrilla far more formidable then that government soldier. The rebellion is crushed with a scorched earth policy which alarms a plantation owner. This also causes the forced relocation of impoverished mountain villagers, whose starvation has probably not been well-known until this point. Delores is captured. While his fate is being decided, a soldier suggests that Delores might not be executed, but jailed, and one day, freed. Delores then pontificates that true freedom is never given freely–it can only be taken by force. At the same time the governor is discussing which form of execution they will use to dispatch the rebel leader. Walker convinces him not to turn him into a martyr but a traitor. When the governor presents Delores with a bribe to leave Queimada forever, the offer is sardonically refused. The next morning, when Walker sees soldiers building a gallows, there is little doubt as for whom it will be used. He helps one of the soldiers make the noose, then proceeds to find Delores unguarded, and cuts his bonds. When Delores meets Walker's instructions on how to escape with stone silence and inaction, he is left to guess the reason for it. Walker's best guess is that it is a kind of "revenge".As Walker is preparing to leave the island, he is approached by someone from behind who greets him with the same line that Delores greeted him when he first arrived on Queimada. Walker turns around with a smile, expecting someone whom he should know is dead, but his expression changes when their eyes meet. Walker is then knifed in the belly, and collapses.

Tags: allegory, avant garde, murder, historical fiction

Review:
Marlon Brando's involvement in the making of "Burn" came about directly as the result of his politician idealism and his desire to make films with a comment on the human situation In 1968 he was deeply concerned in supporting civil rights causes, particularly those to have reference to black and Indian conditions, and, according to his friends, he was greatly disturbed and depressed by the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King "Burn" begins in 1845 as Sir William Walker (Brando) arrives on the island of Queimada, truly as far as can be judged as a harmless traveler but actually an agent of the British government ordered to incite a revolution that will shatter the Portuguese control on the island and permit the British to put their hand on the valuable sugar-cane total product Queimada has a population of two hundred thousand, of whom only five thousand are EuropeansThe main town is a well-protected port with a fort and a garrison, a governor's palace, a cathedral, a bank, a hotel and a brothel The English gentleman recognizes he must play the part of a political Pygmalion He looks around for a suitable subject to train as a revolutionary and he selects José Dolores (Evaristo Marquez), a large, handsome black dock-worker with an air of confidence Walker also recruits Teddy Sanchez (Renato Salvatori), an almost-white clerk with political ambitions Walker persuades José Dolores to steal the bank of the island, and once he does, Walker reveals his name to the government, thereby turning Dolores into a hunted bandit The ingenious Walker then teaches Dolores and his followers in the use of firearms and gradually absorbs in them ideas and feelings to overthrow the Portuguese government The film is quite obviously political in tone, and is a passionate piece of propaganda in the anti-colonial struggle Brando's interpretation of Sir William Walker is apt to call up memories of his Fletcher Christian This is another Englishman, whose gentle speech and soft manners disguise with courage and determinationWalker is not a villain but a cold, inflexible pragmatist with a hard work to accomplish.
Brando carries the film in his portrayal of Sir William Walker, who is ready to play either side of the political struggle to satisfy his government's (Great Britain) needs.
The musical score by long time Sergio Leone contributor Ennio Morricone captures very well the senselessness of the revolution as well as the fact that the slaves are just pawns in a much larger and dangerous game.Apparently the actor who plays Jose Dolores was an illiterate sugar cane cutter and had never even seen a film.
In it he was able to realise his long-expressed wish to make films of a serious, political nature and this one, which charts Britain's involvement in a Portugese colony in the Antilles during the mid 19th century, offers an unequivocally Marxist analysis of the struggle for freedom on the part of the black sugar cane workers.
Gillo Pontecorvo, the Italian director, had previously made the much admired Battle of Algiers on the theme of French colonialism.Walker is sent to the island of Queimada on two occasions in furtherance of British interests in the sugar trade.
Jose Dolores, for example, is played by a young Colombian who had never seen a film before, let alone acted in one, and the imbalance between the two performances is all too evident.
Filming was finally completed in Morocco after Brando, who was at a very low ebb in his life, walked off the set and threatened to quit the production altogether.Despite its flaws, it remains a fascinating film, with a literate script, a strong anti-racist message and a central performance of great intelligence and wit.
Marlon Brando is just amazing in this intelligent film.Most people don't understand Brando's career choices during the sixties.But I think that as years go by,they will.His ideas were way ahead of his time.His talent and range were unbelievable.Every actor tries to imitate his intensity (deniro,penn,nolte,.....) with no success.Definitely the king of acting..
The very same English adventurer is once more despatched to the island, this time to hunt down and eradicate the revolutionaries he created.Marlon Brando plays Sir William Walker in his best Fletcher Christian English accent and a blonde wig with a life of its own.
The film's central pivot, the passage of ten years between Walker's two visits to the island, is handled very sketchily by means of a few incongruous London scenes and a voice-over narration.But there are good things, too.
As those who read my postings may well guess, I believe music plays a tremendously creative role in film, and is a contributory factor of immense importance, and QUEMADA utilises music almost like a weapon in its armoury!Brando has said, in an interview published some years ago in `Playboy' magazine, that he and Pontecorvo didn't get on well together during the production of this movie, (one perhaps forgets now that when QUEMADA was made, Brando's career was at a very low point!), and yet there is no hint of this in the movie itself, as Brando turns in one of his most measured, considered and subtle performances.
It is something you take for yourself', and there is a powerful scene where, in an unguarded moment of temper, the character played by Brando, who, up until then has shown himself to be the benign white liberal, suddenly hurls a racist epithet at his prisoner, thus reminding us, that every `brother' ain't always a `brother'!Pontecorvo's films always seem to manage to upset both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum, (from my own libertarian point of view, a source of deep satisfaction), because he has always refused to traffic in slogans or short-term solutions to complex and long-gestating problems.
In the Nineteenth Century, the cynical and pragmatic British agent William Walker (Marlon Brando) arrives in Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Antilles, to promote a revolution and benefits the sugar trade with England.
He finds in the water and luggage carrier José Dolores (Evaristo Marquez) the necessary potential to be the leader of the slave revolt, and the Portuguese troops are expelled from the island; then the provisional government of President Teddy Sanchez (Renato Salvatore) assumes the power with the support of the British government.
Ten years later, William is hired by the Royal Company that is exploring the sugar cane plantations and the Queimada government to chase José Dolores that is disturbing the economical interests of England in sugar cane with his army of rebels.It is impressive the timing of director Gillo Pontecorvo to make and release "Burn!".
Marlon Brando plays William Walker who is is sent to Portuagal occupied sugar plantations to manipulate slave Jose Dolores into leading a revolt against the Portuguese, which will later allow England to dominate the slaves themselves.
The scenes of battles and dances seem so authentic it almost feels as if the cameras is witnessing events that occurred hundreds of years ago.Brando himself seem to really be enjoying playing the somewhat sadistic, but at time empathic Walker.
A 19th century British diplomat instigates a revolution on the island of Queimada in the Caribbean between the black slaves and the Portuguese colonials in order to break Portugal's hold on the sugar market.
Marlon Brando (grizzled, and with a precarious accent) gives a necessarily unsympathetic performance and has some amazing bits and pieces, yet the picture really only comes to life during the montages, sweeping panoramas as scored by Ennio Morricone (whose work deserves the highest praise).
Gillo Pontecorvo, the acclaimed director of 1966's "The Battle of Algiers" released his next film "Queimada" -- aka "Burn!" -- three years later in 1969.
"Burn!" stars Marlon Brando as William Walker, a British agent sent to a fictional Caribbean island, Queimada, to spark a revolution amongst the black slaves who work the sugar cane fields.
Brando cited "Burn!" as one of his best performances, but his portrayal of Walker is actually unmoving because he's never fleshed out as a human being, not to mention his lack of character becomes clearer as the film progresses.The film runs 112 minutes, which is the version originally released in the USA in 1969, but there's supposed to be a restored version that runs 132 minutes.
It's a film with one of the finest scores of Ennio Morricone and an ambiguous performance by Marlon Brando--that makes you wonder if the William Walker role is merely to be viewed as that of a mercenary.
I have watched the film several times and loved Gillo Pontecorvo's direction of the scenes at the port, which are one of my favorite sequences in cinema.
Pontecorvo wanted Brando to create an evil figure of "Sir" William Walker, who was a real person though not a British knight.
It is perhaps most anti-racist movie that I have seen with William Walker in all his glory unable to comprehend the political conviction and values of a native worker who refuses a chance to escape a cruel execution.This film has a small but significant role for Italian actor Renato Salvatori.I have seen hundreds of political movies--but this will remain my all time favorite.
I thought that Evaristo Marquez who isn't really an actor did a fine job and carried the film well when Brando wasn't on screen.
Brando plays a British version of the CIA sent to wrest a Carribbean island away from the Portuguese empire and its slave-holding planters.
Film-maker Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers) is particularly alert to the many subtle and not-so-subtle modes of European domination, and I like the way he lingers over African crowd scenes, neither romanticizing nor denigrating their presence.
(3 outta 5 stars)Very good drama about colonialism with Marlon Brando playing the real-life character of William Walker...
Ed Harris played the same character as Brando in the later film, "Walker"..
Marlon Brando gives an impressive performance in 'Burn!' as 19th century English mercenary and agent provocateur Sir William Walker.
In fact I would say it is equal to his more celebrated roles as Don Vito Corleone or Colonel Kurtz.Walker is sent by the British to a Caribbean island currently run by the Portuguese, and manages by Machiavellian manipulations to engineer a slave revolt that gives the British exactly what they want - power and money.
The movie is almost a textbook example of imperialism, but it isn't just a political lesson, it is a consistently interesting human drama, focused on Walker's uneasy relationship with a local porter turned rebel leader Jose Dolores (played by non-actor Evaristo Marquez).
The characters are all filthy and unwashed, there is no straight-out-of-wardrobe damsel in distress, and the heroes are slaves and servants ignored in most films set in the Caribbean.Brando, still potent and fit in his thirties, plays a mercenary pulled back into service from an British drunktank.
There is no other film that treats this subject with as much depth and seriousness, and it really fleshes out all the arguments that exploitation, revolution and martyrdom include.The movie is loosely, but fairly closely tied to the real history of Haiti, and delivers all this political meaning and discourse is a very entertaining package of palace intrigues, assassinations, and ultimately, firestorms that engulf the island.
The message is handled in the plot, and in exchanges between Brando and Marquez, whose characters have come to know each other and transit from partners to enemies.Never shown on US TV to my knowledge, derided for being untidy in its production, this film is a too anti-capitalist for the American media with its raw, hard look at the history of Western/Christian abuse of native peoples and African slaves in the Caribbean.It remains, however, a great instant education into the history of colonialism, and well as a guidebook to destabilizing regimes through false flag operations (something still in use today).
Brando plays Englishman (convingingly) Sir William Walker a young snobbish, aristocratic, adventurer sent from England to the islands conquered by the Spanish and Portugese.
Gillo Pontecorvo's bold follow-up to "The Battle of Algiers" has become something of a cult movie over the years for a variety of reasons, (not least for the involvement of Brando), but it is a film that is little seen and was something of a commercial disaster.
He plays William Walker, an English agent provocateur, sent to the island of Quiemada to instruct the natives in the art of revolt and overthrow the legitimate government, picking an uneducated, if charismatic, native, (Marquez), as the revolution's leader.
But he instills in the man a Marxist sense of revolutionary fervor over and above what he had originally planned and finds himself returning to the island ten years later to help quell the revolution he had instigated.This is a complex, diffuse film shot, (superbly by Marcello Gatti and Giuseppe Ruzzolini), like a documentary.
In some areas, this film actually manages to be a progression from Pontecorvo's masterpiece Battle of Algiers, but unfortunately, the 'sinking lips' mask what may have been great performances making it hard to engage with the characters.
William Walker is potentially one of the greatest roles in film history played by one of the greatest actors of his generation.
That's probably mostly because of the film's star, Marlon Brando, but the movie itself is quite good.
The story centers on a British man, Brando, who goes to the Portuguese-run island of Queimada in order to provoke a slave rebellion.
are the trade-mark of LALA Land--with the notable exceptions of 'citizen Kane, 'the third man'.this film follows that typical format a bit too much, considering its Italian production---yet Brando's performance and 'jose delores's' characterizations are remarkable.
Queimada is Pontecorvo's follow up to his critically acclaimed magnum opus, Battle of Algiers–an epic war movie based on the events surrounding the Algerian War. Queimada stars American movie-icon Marlon Brando in the lead role of a mercenary named Sir William Walker.
Among the myriad of performances that Brando delivered during his long illustrious career, it's quite remarkable that he rated his portrayal of an agent provocateur in Pontecorvo's Queimada as his best ever.
Brando also admitted to it during an interview with Larry King on CNN as the latter, apparently disinterested in discussing a relatively unknown movie during the precious little time he had with the great actor, never allowed Brando to justify his choice.On the face of it, the movie deals with imperialism of the nineteenth century wherein colonial superpowers like England enslaved the black in the name of civilizing them–a seemingly moral obligation that the English laureate Rudyard Kipling so eloquently referred to as "The White Man's Burden".
One of the greatest actors of all time, he is superb here in this role.Brando himself said in his autobiography that he did the best acting he ever did in this film.Director Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers) was also superb, and gave us a classic film showing how colonial powers foment revolution to their own ends, and how their plans often backfire.Evaristo Márquez, who died this year, was an illiterate herdsman before he joined Brando and Pontecorvo.
Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando sporting a ridiculous blond wig) is a British agent sent to the sugar-rich Portuguese island of Queimada in the mid-19th Century.
Ten years later, Walker returns, this time accompanied by British troops, to find that Dolores has incited another revolt - and Walker is forced to put down the very revolution he started.Queimada!
Pontecorvo's static, unemotional cinema verite style worked well with Battle of Algiers; the use of non-actors in key roles enhanced the film's realism.
Evaristo Marquez's Dolores is similar; he is more of an idea than a character, and unlike in Algiers, the casting of a non-actor does not work.
Apparently, the Sir William Walker that Marlon Brando plays in this film isn't quite THE Sir William Walker!
Marlon Brando plays William Walker, a mercenary who is sent to the Spanish Caribbean on behalf of the British Empire.
Gillo Pontercorvo's Burn!, a portrayal of an English-instigated slave revolt on a 19th Century Portugese colony in the Caribbean, is a captivating follow up to his debut feature "The Battle of Algiers".
Considering that one of the early images of the movie is a white island whose land was colored or rather dis-colored by the dried bones of African slaves brought to the island after the total destruction of the native population by Portuguese "settlers", it does point to Brando's ability to fill a screen.I had never seen a film by Gillo Pontecorvo, which is pretty blasphemous for any self-respecting, pompous cinephile such as myself although Battle for Algiers is high on my list, along with other films that my friends can't believe I haven't seen, like Rashomon, Apocalypse Now, or The Wild Bunch.
This film, however, is kind of what I expected from someone whose work is as politically-informed as Pontecorvo's and very characteristic of late 60s-early 70s cinema: frenetic camera movement, jump cuts, hammy yet stirring close-ups, and the highlighting of political injustice.Brando plays SIR William Walker, a colonial troubleshooter for England's sugar industry, or interests.
Basically, Walker goes to Queimada to foment revolution against the Portuguese, meets and "trains" the porter Jose Dolores (played by the studly Evaristo Marquez).
I think this is  Brando's best film (although perhaps only an ordinary performance for him, which is good).
But William Walker plays the Africans against the Portugese if only for the British to flourish over there.The film wasn't that nuanced or anything.
not only addresses similar topics, it's also as good.Sir William Walker arrives in Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean, to instigate a revolution that will overthrow the government and set up a new one open to business with the British crown.
It is also hard not to simultaneously appreciate and loathe the slick operations of Sir William Walker, an English agent provocateur who expertly manipulates one courageous man, Jose Dolores, into fomenting an effective rebellion that is actually planned to ultimately fail ten years later.
Marlon Brando gives a masterful performance as Walker.