| | |  Entertainment | July 2009 
¡Que Viva Mexico!
 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
go to original
July 28, 2009
| ¡Que Viva Mexico!
Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein
Writers: Grigori Aleksandrov (additional material), Sergei M. Eisenstein (original screenplay)
Sergei Bondarchuk as Narrator (voice)
Grigori Aleksandrov as Himself
MOSFILM, 1931. | |
¡Que viva México! is a film project begun by the Russian avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein. It would have been an episodic portrayal of Mexican culture and politics from pre-Conquest civilization to the Mexican revolution. Production was beset by difficulties and was eventually abandoned. Jay Leyda and Zina Voynow call it his "greatest film plan and his greatest personal tragedy".
Eisenstein left for Mexico in December 1930 - after various projects proposed by Charles Chaplin and Paramount Pictures fell through, and Paramount released him from his contract. The Mexican film was produced by Upton Sinclair and a small group of financiers recruited by his wife Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair, under a legal corporation these investors formed, the Mexican Film Trust. Their contract with Eisenstein called for a short, apolitical feature film about or involving Mexico, in a scenario to be designed and filmed by Eisenstein and his two compatriots, Grigori Alexandrov and Eduard Tisse.
Other provisos of the contract, which Eisenstein signed on 24 November, 1930, included that the film would be completed (including all post-production work) by April, 1931, and would show or imply nothing that could be construed as insulting to or critical of post-Revolution Mexico (a condition imposed by the Mexican government before it would allow the three Soviets entry into their country).
Filmed material was also to be subject to censorship by the Mexican government, at first after it was filmed and printed, later in 1931 during shooting via an on-site censor.
Eisenstein shot somewhere between 175,000 and 250,000 lineal feet of film before, for a variety of reasons, the Mexican Film Trust stopped production, and still was not completed as planned by Eisenstein. Again for several reasons, Eisenstein was not allowed to return to the United States to construct a finshed film, nor could the footage be sent to the USSR for completion by him there.
The Mexican Film Trust had two short features and a short subject culled from the footage and in release during 1934. (Thunder Over Mexico, Eisenstein in Mexico, Death Day) and others, with the Trust's permission, have attempted different versions (e.g. Marie Seton's Time in the Sun). The title ¡Qué viva México!, originally was proposed by Eisenstein in correspondence with Upton Sinclair during the last months of shooting, but was first used for a version made by Grigory Alexandrov, released in 1979, about a decade after the footage was sent to the USSR by the Museum of Modern Art in exchange for several Soviet films from the Gosfilmofond archive. At least one other version followed Alexandrov's, and another has been proposed during the first years of the 21st century.
Plot summary: Original vision
There is no evidence that Eisenstein had any specific idea for a film about or set in Mexico before his actual arrival there in December, 1930, although he began shooting almost immediately. The Sinclairs had made it clear that they were expecting Eisenstein to concentrate on visual imagery, and anything by way of a plot would be secondary: they were looking for an artistic travelogue. Furthermore, although the film was to have been completed by April, 1931, it wasn't until about that time that Eisenstein even settled on the basic idea of a multi-part film, an anthology with each part focussed on a different subculture of the Mexican peoples. Only later still would this idea resolve itself into the concept of a six-part film encompassing the history of the nation, its people and its societal evolution to the present time.
Specific details and the contents of each section, and how to connect them, would evolve further over the ensuing months while Eisenstein, Alexandrov and Tisse shot tens of thousands of feet of film. Toward the latter part of 1931, the film was finally structured, in Eisenstein's mind, to consist of four primary sections plus a brief prologue and epilogue.
The modern theoretician Bordwell also claims that each episode would have its own distinct style, be "dedicated to a different Mexican artist", and would "also base itself on some primal element (stone, water, iron, fire, air)". The soundtrack in each case would feature a different Mexican folk song. Moreover, each episode would tell the story of a romantic couple; and "threading through all parts was the theme of life and death, culminating in the mockery of death".
If true, these details were never communicated to the Sinclairs, who simply found themselves with recurring requests for additional funding as Eisenstein's vision expanded, with no attempt by Eisenstein to respect the economic realities involved in making such an epic work and the financial and emotional limitations of his producers, his contract obligations, and his inability or unwillingness to cogently communicate to them before acquiring permission to proceed away from those contract obligations.
This was the ultimate legacy of the film and would be repeated in the similarly aborted Soviet Eisenstein project, Bezhin Meadow. |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us