Watchingwell
Curated classic films
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, I am sharing my musings about what we get to know about some parts of the world from the movies.
I caught the film, Juarez (1939), directed by William Dieterle,
a while back, and it started this train of thinking. Bette Davis and Brian Aherne didn't speak with accents though they were supposed to be Austrian, and everyone else, including Paul Muni, in the title role of the Mexican leader, Benito Juarez, did. However, this is always a tricky problem when everyone is speaking English, anyway, instead of the language of the film's setting. So we begin with this little inaccuracy and suspend our disbelief to learn the story of the Emperor Maximilian and the Empress Carlota, who in 1863 were installed as the royal personages of Mexico by the government of France only to meet an unhappy fate four years later at the hands of the justifiably-miffed Mexicans, led by Benito Juarez.
Although the film is called Juarez and the role was given to
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Muni, an actor who often played heroic roles (Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola, e.g.), greater attention is paid to the hapless Hapsburgs, Maximilian and Carlota, who are supposedly devoted to each other and their subjects, the people of Mexico. This, I thought was wrong when I first saw it. I thought Benito Juarez, the great liberator of Mexico, should have had a more interesting story to tell than the practically forgotten Maximilian and Carlota. However, I realized that if Bette Davis was in the film, it was going to be a Bette Davis film, and thus, the emphasis on her character. For all that, it was not wildly inaccurate as to the historical facts. While I thought that Aherne’s Maximilian was unbelievably naïve and principled, it turns out that he was actually thought of as an enlightened thinker, as monarchs go, and probably would have been a very progressive monarch if it wasn’t for the fact that the majority of Mexicans saw no need for any kind of monarch, particularly a foreign one.
Speaking of which, one could ask what the French were doing, occupying Mexico and installing Emperors, anyway. It happened that, at the time, the United States, instead of applying the Monroe Doctrine, was fighting a Civil War. As soon as it was over, the United States made its feelings known to France with troops at the border and arms supplied to Juarez, for emphasis, and the French decided to drop the whole Mexico thing.
Unfortunately for Maximilian, he took his responsibilities more seriously than the French. He refused to leave with them and was captured by juaristas and eventually killed by a firing squad for some really brutal tactics that had been employed in his name to fight the rebellion. All this you could have learned from watching this film. If you learned what I learned in school about Mexican history or about United States-Mexico history, you probably wouldn’t have learned this story. Mexico, our southern neighbor, has a less than significant mention in our history textbooks. Canada has even less. Thanks to Hollywood, I know something about Mexican history.
There were a number of films on the subject. (I can’t believe it was just the proximity of Hollywood to the Mexican border.) Besides Juarez, Vera Cruz (1957), directed by Robert Aldrich, takes place in the same period. It stars Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, and it is basically a western with the Emperor Maximilian-Benito Juarez conflict as a backdrop. However, western fans would have enjoyed it because of the iconic portrayals of good guy, Cooper, and bad guy, Lancaster, with a sinister smile, in a style that was later a trademark of Sergio Leone's westerns, and, at the same time, been made aware of this period of time in Mexico.
Captain from Castile (1947), directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero and lovely, Jean Peters in her first film, is the story of a young Spanish man, whose family has been targeted by the Inquisition, who joins Cortez on his way to conquer Montezuma and the Aztec civilization. Today, we appreciate that this is not an admirable thing, but the film mostly is about the romance of Power and Peters with his problems with the Inquisition as a backdrop. Great score by Alfred Newman.
Wallace Beery played the title role in Viva Villa (1934), called in the prologue, a ‘fictionalized biography’ of Pancho Villa. I assume this means that unlike other film biographies, MGM admits to making things up in this one. I remember only one thing about the film from when I saw it as a child and that was an enemy being buried in the ground up to his head, covered with honey, and left for the ants. I don’t know whether this might actually have happened or was one of those ‘fictionalized events’, but it left a strong impression of the cruelty of the image. Even if the filmmakers had been scrupulously accurate in every detail, I could not accept Beery as Pancho Villa even when I first saw it. He was a well-known actor who did not ‘morph’ into different personas in his work. Villa was a pretty colorful character, from what I’ve read, and a more accurate film biography could have been entertaining. Directed by Jack Conway.
In fact, Villa was deemed to be so entertaining that there were quite a
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Rory Calhoun, as an American mercenary aiding Villa, with Gilbert Roland, and a young Shelley Winters, directed by George Sherman, and from 1958 Villa, starring Brian Keith and Cesar Romero, directed by James B. Clark.
A film about the United States retaliation for Villa’s attack on the New Mexico town in 1916, 
They Came To Cordura (1959) doesn’t really make us understand why the United States army went into Mexico, (supposedly due to editing over-kill), but it is one film that touches on this little-known episode in the tumultuous, shared history of the United States and Mexico. Directed by Robert Rossen, the film features a respectable cast of Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth and Van Heflin.
Marlon Brando’s portrayal of the Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, in Viva Zapata, from 1952, as a subdued, principled hero was so convincingly sympathetic that it was responsible for my interest in Mexican history, my attraction to Orozco’s 1931 painting, Zapatistas, and a feeling of solidarity with the Mexican people and their quest for democratic government. This did not change when I eventually went to the library to find a book about Emiliano Zapata, and read that the story wasn’t quite as romantic as portrayed in the film. However, Zapata really was from the state of Morelos, he really did wish to return lands to the peasants, he
really did have a brother, Eufemio (played, in an Oscar-winning performance, by Anthony Quinn), he did join up with Pancho Villa to try to form a constitutional government with a third rival named Carranza, and he really was assassinated by forces loyal to Carranza, who had appointed himself president.
If you watched this film, you would have received some general knowledge of the progress of the Mexican revolution and some of the key players, not about President Wilson sending General Pershing into Mexico in 1916 to capture Villa and why, which would make an interesting film by itself. But this is a drama, not a documentary, and even a documentary filmmaker has to make choices about what to include and what not to include.
Not to diminish the artistry of a really fine documentary, but the dramatic film, at its most artistic, can illuminate a story in such a way that it contributes to our understanding almost as well as a documentary. With a script by John Steinbeck, direction of Elia Kazan, photography by Joe MacDonald, music by Alex North, and acting by an ensemble of heavyweight actors, including Brando, Quinn, Joseph Wiseman, Mildred Dunnock, Jean Peters, and Margo, Viva Zapata can be excused for some inaccuracies, as its goals were artistic, showing what happens when individuals who are sincere in their idealism are met by the corrupting influence of power.
Later on, the movies seemed to discover that there were also stories to be told south of Mexico, and a Peruvian counterpart to Captain from Castile, is The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), directed by Irving Lerner, about the clash of civilizations (so-called) embodied in two men, Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizarro and the Inca emperor, Atahualpa. Adapted from a successful play by Peter Shaffer, compelling performances are turned in by Robert Shaw as Pizarro, who promises to free Atahualpa, played by Christopher Plummer, if he delivers enough treasure, and then, doesn't. The film was promoted in 1969 as a heroic adventure, -- Pizarro, with only 167 men, conquering an empire of twelve million. Today, I think it would present a different slant.
Filmmakers, sometimes, take on the role of witnesses, when the official stories don't reveal the whole picture, particularly with unofficial American involvement in the affairs of Central and South America.
Marlon Brando’s portrayal of the Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, in Viva Zapata, from 1952, as a subdued, principled hero was so convincingly sympathetic that it was responsible for my interest in Mexican history, my attraction to Orozco’s 1931 painting, Zapatistas, and a feeling of solidarity with the Mexican people and their quest for democratic government. This did not change when I eventually went to the library to find a book about Emiliano Zapata, and read that the story wasn’t quite as romantic as portrayed in the film. However, Zapata really was from the state of Morelos, he really did wish to return lands to the peasants, he
If you watched this film, you would have received some general knowledge of the progress of the Mexican revolution and some of the key players, not about President Wilson sending General Pershing into Mexico in 1916 to capture Villa and why, which would make an interesting film by itself. But this is a drama, not a documentary, and even a documentary filmmaker has to make choices about what to include and what not to include.
Not to diminish the artistry of a really fine documentary, but the dramatic film, at its most artistic, can illuminate a story in such a way that it contributes to our understanding almost as well as a documentary. With a script by John Steinbeck, direction of Elia Kazan, photography by Joe MacDonald, music by Alex North, and acting by an ensemble of heavyweight actors, including Brando, Quinn, Joseph Wiseman, Mildred Dunnock, Jean Peters, and Margo, Viva Zapata can be excused for some inaccuracies, as its goals were artistic, showing what happens when individuals who are sincere in their idealism are met by the corrupting influence of power.
Later on, the movies seemed to discover that there were also stories to be told south of Mexico, and a Peruvian counterpart to Captain from Castile, is The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), directed by Irving Lerner, about the clash of civilizations (so-called) embodied in two men, Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizarro and the Inca emperor, Atahualpa. Adapted from a successful play by Peter Shaffer, compelling performances are turned in by Robert Shaw as Pizarro, who promises to free Atahualpa, played by Christopher Plummer, if he delivers enough treasure, and then, doesn't. The film was promoted in 1969 as a heroic adventure, -- Pizarro, with only 167 men, conquering an empire of twelve million. Today, I think it would present a different slant.
Filmmakers, sometimes, take on the role of witnesses, when the official stories don't reveal the whole picture, particularly with unofficial American involvement in the affairs of Central and South America.
Under Fire (1983) follows the harried and dangerous lives of photo-journalists in the middle of a civil war in Nicaragua before the fall of Somoza to the Sandinistas. Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris and Joanna Cassidy give fine performances. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode.
Oliver Stone's version of similar events in Salvador from 1986, is
Staying in El Salvador, Romero from 1989 tells the story of
Down to South America, we have Missing from 1982, starring Jack Lemon, whose son goes missing in Chile during the coup d'etat of 1973. He goes to find him with his daughter-in-law, played by Sissy Spacek, and the political realities he finds shatter his previously-held beliefs. Based on a true story and powerfully directed by Costa-Gavras.
Finally, I don't usually discuss documentaries, but I recommend that you try to find The Mothers of the Plaza of Mayo from1985 (I found it on the internet), the story of the women who protested continuously in the plaza in Buenos Aires to draw attention to the "disappeared" sons, daughters, loved ones who vanished in the so-called Dirty War, perpetrated by the military dictatorships in Argentina. At no small risk to their own safety, they challenged the government to give them answers.
