Customer Reviews

Viva Villa [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The historical accuracy of this lavish film is nil except that it does depict the sheer wholesale violence of the Mexican Revolution, in which whole villages disappeared off the maps forever. It also was filmed closely enough in time to the events depicted that the costumes are quite accurate, and I think that I read that some actual footage from the era was mixed into the movie, but I'm not positive of that. This film stands out as the best and most worthwhile Pancho Villa effort so far simply because of the obvious but incomparable casting of Wallace Beery as Villa. Beery effortlessly brings the macho leadership quality that Raoul Walsh wrote about in his references to Villa in his autobiography, "Each Man In His Time," and has received no competition from any of the later fine actors that have attempted the part. Beery brings a sense of outrageous flamboyance and sheer fun to everything he does on screen, and even though his Mexican accent fades in and out like a distant radio signal, he was born to play this part. Leo Carillo gives an uncharacteristically restrained performance, King Kong's Fay Wray is incandescently beautiful, and among cast members only Stuart Erwin, who plays the American reporter, grates the nerves a bit. Lee Tracy was originally cast for that one and would have been worlds better, but a drunken urination from his hotel balcony onto the Mexican crowds below effectively ended his career.

Wallace Beery stars in this surprisingly raw, graphically violent (and yet, somehow somewhat sentimentalized) Hollywood version of the life of Pancho Villa, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution. Character actor Leo Carillo, infamous as a latino Uncle Tom for his portrayal as Pancho in the "Ceesco Keed" series, here costars as Sierra, Villa's blandly sadistic lieutenant, and Faye Wray appears as an aristocratic lady who catches Villa's fancy. Ben Hecht's sharp, no-nonsense script is politically left-leaning, and while it takes liberties with its depictation of Villa as a brutish lout with a heart of gold, Beery's performance sheds unexpected nuance... Basically, he's transposing his loveable-mug boxer persona onto the Mexican landscape, but in a weird way, it almost works. Apparently this film had a stop-and-start shooting history, with three directors (Howard Hawks and William Wellman worked on it, but didn't wind up in the final credits) and some extensive recasting as well; James Wong Howe provides some typically fine B&W cinematography. A dynamic classic old film, with a relatively sympathetic presentation of the Latin American peasantry... Worth checking out, even though the racial aspects of the film are at times dubious.

Villa was very poular in the U.S. because he let American newsreel reporters film him during his earlier days as a revolutionary fighting usurper Victoriano Huerta, President Madero (not "Madera", Mr. Maltin)'s murderer and succesor.

However, when Huerta was gone, the U.S. recognized Villa's main revolutionary rival Venustiano Carranza as president of Mexico. Villa felt betrayed and raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico killing several innocents. American public opinion turned bitterly against him, and Hollywood started making so called "greasers movies" to exploit the resentment. This picture is one of them.

Villa is portrayed here as some sort of Lombrosian aberration, the good monster who can't help but being a monster. None of the historical facts are accurate and some are downright ridiculous: Villa was a president of Mexico just as much as Davy Crockett was ever president of the United States! I myself am not a big fan of Villa, but I suspect the producers were not only trying to demean him but Mexicans in general (shown as a bunch of well meaning brutal killers). If this is the best portrait ever made of him, I don't want to see the rest!

Articles refer to the scene where Fay Wray's character is whipped while she laughs and claim that it was edited because of the newly enforced Production Code in July 1934. This is not accurate. In the 1960s, on either New York channel WNEW 5 or WCBS 2, that scene was shown regularly whenever "Viva Villa" was aired. There was also an additional scene showing Leo Carillo's character lining up 3 federal troops at a time, front to back, and shooting them with one bullet to save ammunition. Both scenes are edited out from the Turner Classics print, but they do exist and thus allow for the possibility of the film eventually being restored.

This film purporting to be an historical drama of Villa's exploits is often more like a comic operetta. The script by Ben Hecht is often nose-thumbing and satirical and the film often debunks Villa as a child-like, egotistical and lecherous bandit (a bravura and quite amusing performance by Beery). His blood-thirsty side-kick (Leo Carillo) is straight caricature. As a rip-roaring entertainment Viva Villa fits the bill quite nicely, for historical accuracy and fairness--look elsewhere. Interesting foot-note: The American journalist was supposed to have been played by Lee Tracy. Mr Tracy while in Mexico and soused to the gills answered Mother Nature's call from his balcony and provided a parade that was marching underneath with quite a shower. MGM, understandably replaced him with Stuart Erwin. 3 1/2 stars.

"Viva Villa" is one of the biographic historical films that were so popular in the 30s - "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933), "Queen Christina" (1933), "Cleopatra" (1934), "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935), "Rembrandt" (1936), "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936), "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937), "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939). The film confesses at the start that it is a fictional account, but in reality, it stays pretty much to script in portraying the major historical events, although the character profiles are a bit convoluted, perhaps because Villa himself had only been dead a few years (1923) and the Mexican revolution was still fresh in everyone's mind (e.g., there had been sporadic uprisings as late as 1929, and Cardenas' reign didn't start until 1934).

"Viva Villa" features Wallace Beery in the starring role. It was the second time Beery had played Villa, appearing in a 1917 silent 15 chapter serial entitled "Patria" that had been bankrolled by William Randolph Hearst. In 1934 Beery was at the height of his popularity, having starred in the popular "Min and Bill" (1930) and "The Big House" (1930) and won the Oscar for "The Champ" (1931). That same year he played Long John Silver in "Treasure Island" and he would continue for 15 more years and more than 20 films.

Beery plays Villa with his "aw shucks" characteristics, that really don't give us a good portrait of Villa, who in fact was extremely clever. He also plays him as a womanizing drunk with a distinct sadistic streak (e.g., he buries an opponent alive in an ant hill). Nonetheless, Beery won the Venice Film festival best actor award and received an academy award nomination. Literary Digest said Beery "acted quite brilliantly".

Leo Carillo co-stars as Beery's sidekick, a role Carillo would hone to perfection as the sidekick to TVs Cisco Kid (1950 - 56). Interestingly enough, Carillo later played Villa in the 1949 "Pancho Villa Returns."

Other supporting actors include Fay Wray (of "King Kong" fame), Stu Erwin (TVs "The Trouble with Father"), and Donald Cook (best known as Jimmy Cagney's brother in "Public Enemy").

Lee Tracy started the film in Erwin's role, but he insulted the Mexicans by urinating on their flag, and was removed from the film and his contract with MGM was cancelled. His scenes were re-shot. Then an airplane crash destroyed the film and the entire picture had to be re-shot.

For 1934, "Viva Villa" has good sound and film quality. The film is originally directed by Howard Hawks, but Hawks was upset with Beery's interpretation, so MGM replaced Hawks with Jack Conway, a silent film director.

The film was written by the great Ben Hecht ("Front Page", "Stagecoach", "Some Like it Hot", "Gunga Din", etc.). Hecht had 6 academy award nominations, including "Viva Villa" and won 2 times ("Underworld" and "The Scoundrel"). Howard Hawks made uncredited contributions to the direction and the writing early on (the film started in 1931 but took until 1934 to be released), and these are most evident in the action scenes which are exceptional for 1934.

The cinematography is by James Wong Howe, one of Hollywood's best cameramen (nominated 8 times and won 2 times - "Hud" and "The Rose Tatoo"). Howe's characteristic use of dramatic lighting and unusual camera shots are well in evidence in "Viva Villa".

Personally, I prefer "Viva Zapata", a film that was inspired by "Viva Villa". But if you're a Beery fan you will certainly enjoy this film.

BTW - If you think that Wallace Beery makes a poor Mexican, here are some equally ludicrous examples of non-Mexicans who took on a role as a Mexican - Burt Lancaster in "Valdez is coming" (1971), Paul Newman in "Hombre" (1967), Telly Savalas in "Pancho Villa" (1972), Marlon Brando in "Viva Zapata (1952), Eli Wallach in the Spaghetti westerns, Rod Steiger in "A Fistful of Dynamite" (1971), Yul Brenner in "Villa Rides" (1968), and Charlton Heston in "Touch of Evil" (1956).

The other reviewers are certainly correct in lambasting "Viva Villa!" as unhistorical and even, by contemporary sensibilities, offensive in certain characterizations. But what is moving, and even inspiring, is the film's recognition of the injustice of a society in which the poor and wretched are treated contemptibly, as if they were little more than animals. Villa's ferocity (as portrayed by the incomparable Beery, a hard and difficult man in a role made for him), the cold cruelty of Leo Carrillo's character, and the general mayhem of the Mexican Revolution are perhaps Hollywood's sly way of saying that 1930s Depression America also had deep injustices that needed addressing -- or who knows what could happen here! As usual, the "message" is leavened with lots of action and some broad comedy, but Beery's Villa -- even when presented as the "comic Mexican" -- evinces a sinister seriousness, as if to say, "I may talk funny and look funny to you; I may seem ignorant but I know what is being done to people." This is a radical film disguised as entertainment: it could be better radicalism, true, but it is very good entertainment! The film really does have something to say -- although (as do too many "Hollywoody" films that attempt political topics) it "lays it between [or rather, among] the lines."