BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Pierre Radulescu 1929: Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse headed West in search for contracts. A short documentary (unfinished) for a German client, then in France their first sound movie (Romance Sentimentale). 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. Only Aleksandrov was alive. He restored the material and asked Sergei Bondarchuk to be the narrator: the result was да здравствует Мексика! (¡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. Only a titan has that power to tell four or five stories in the same time, following their rhythm.

fbmorinigo The general plan of this film is strongly reminiscent of two films that Walt Disney made at the request of the State Department during World War II, namely SALUDOS AMIGOS and THE THREE CABALLEROS. 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.

peqdavid5 It's unbelievable how everything can be art when you look through the eyes of a 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. Why was it lost in time for decades? Because no one in Russia or in the USA trusted this film enough to show it. 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. Now, do I have to say the name of this really good film maker? I don't think so, I think you already know. "Que Viva Mexico!" highly recommendable, Mexican fellows: watch it, this is your real country.

ruralplain The pleasure of the film is in the noble vistas of the kind Social Realist (aka Marxist) directors so excel at creating. It is horribly marred, however, by an absolutely puerile view of Mexican society and history. Not only are both viewed from a naive Marxist perspective, but the original material being twisted to fit a Marxist perspective is already twisted by Eisenstein's foolish inventions. 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 purely pagan wedding ceremony in Indian dress including feathers belongs to the Hollywood genre of Shangri-la. 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. This film is to be recommended only for its visuals, and even this will be enjoyed by very tolerant viewers.