Elia Kazan's 'Viva Zapata!' is a worthy film. It is steeped in good intentions. Kazan and John Steinbeck, who wrote the script, definitely had their hearts in the right place. Whether 'Viva Zapata!' is a good film is an entirely different question. For me, the picture had two revealing moments. The first is the scene where Zapata (Marlon Brando) has become a high official in the Mexican government and receives a delegation of peasants. The scene pedantically - really painfully - mirrors the opening of the film, where Zapata is a member of exactly this kind of delegation and voices exactly the same kind of complaint to the then president Porfirio Diaz. Now, Zapata behaves in exactly the same way as Diaz did back then. This is so overdone, and the parallel is driven home with such insistence and lack of subtlety, that I was really irritated. The second moment is the last scene of the film, where a group of campesinos fantasise about Zapata being not dead but hiding in the mountains, waiting to come back when he is needed (like old Emperor Barbarossa). This is so kitschy and overdone that it negates everything the film has tried to express before. Acting is uneven. Marlon Brando was a strange choice as Zapata. His heavy makeup is pretty evident, and his languid performance never convinces: He definitely looks as if he did not get enough sleep while working on this film. Jean Peters as his wife Josefa is much better, but the best performance is Anthony Quinn's as Zapata's brother Eufemio. When Brando and Quinn appear in the same scene, there is never any doubt about who dominates and who is the better actor. Photography is good, but the pacing of the film is as uneven as the acting. I can't say I found the whole thing exciting or particularly suspenseful. All in all, mixed impressions.
Review of Viva Zapata!
