Excellent, a Must See

Beautiful, moving film.

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Copyright 21 April 1934 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. New York opening at the Criterion, 10 April 1934. London opening at the Empire, 3 May 1934. U.K release: 29 September 1934. 12 reels. 10,284 feet. 114 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Pancho Villa from boyhood to death. NOTES: Academy Award, Assistant Director, John Waters only (defeating Scott Beal for Imitation of Life and Cullen Tate for Cleopatra). Also nominated for Best Picture (It Happened One Night), Writing Adaptation (It Happened One Night), Sound Recording (One Night of Love). Wallace Beery, Best Actor, Venice Film Festival Award. 7th in the Film Daily annual poll of U.S. film critics. Photographed on location in Mexico. About half the movie was originally directed by Howard Hawks. Shooting commenced 10 October 1933. Lee Tracy had the role of Johnny Sykes but was fired from the project when he was arrested by the Mexican police on 19 November 1933 for urinating from his hotel balcony on to a parade of Mexican soldiers. Hawks was fired in late November when he refused to testify against Tracy. It is alleged that a great deal of Hawks footage was destroyed in a plane crash. Hawks himself claimed that most of the location material is his, except for all the exterior battle sequences which were directed by Richard and Arthur Rosson (and photographed by Charles G. Clarke). Conway kept Wong Howe on as photographer when he took over. Shooting was completed on 12 January 1934. Negative cost: $1,022,000. Initial domestic rental gross: $1,109,000. According to Ronald Haver in his splendidly produced and researched David O. Selznick's Hollywood (Knopf, New York, 1980), there is little Hawks' material in the final movie. "Conway began filming from scratch and a 2nd unit in Mexico under the direction of Richard Rosson continued working all through the winter right into March 1934." The leading lady in the Hawks version was Mona Maris. She was replaced by Fay Wray.COMMENT: "Fiction woven from truth," so a Foreword tells us. But this sprawling, not uninteresting account of the rise and fall of Pancho Villa could be described as the reverse of that laudable aim. It is truth woven from a fiction that simplifies, romanticizes, augments and so far distorts basic facts that only their conclusions can be recognized as truths.Difficult as it is to separate fact from fiction in Viva Villa, it's even harder to quantify its value as entertainment. The picture seems to be a composite made up of elements that tend to undermine dramatic unity. We are never sure whether we should regard Villa as bandit or patriot, monster or saint, butcher or clown; whether we should like him, hate him, admire or loathe him. The script takes a long time to make up its mind, but just as it finally settles on "loathe", it suddenly switches sides again and fades out on "admire". These peregrinations don't worry Beery a jot. He plays the character on the same wheedling but brutish level throughout, except in his scenes with Madero when he adopts a childishly insincere posture of hero worship that actually undermines the script. But Beery's myopic performance is just one of many factors that work against the film's success. The chief and most persistent flaw comes down to the dreadful miscasting of second-rate substitute, Stuart Erwin, who tries without the slightest hope in the world to fill the abrasively caustic shoes of Lee Tracy. Erwin turns the reporter into a charmless, cowardly milksop of a whinger. Tracy played the same lines as a compellingly obnoxious scoop-at-any-price newshound right from the start. When the script requires Erwin to be really nasty, he comes a real cropper. We long for a stray bullet to gun him down. But, no! He's still hanging in there, snowing away, right to the bitter end. I didn't take to Leo Carillo's far-too-casual study of the hideously sadistic Diego either, but at least he did suppress most of his usual irritatingly over-the-top mannerisms. Donald Cook, not unexpectedly, erred in the opposite direction, by effortlessly contriving to drain his characterization of any color and make his portrait stiff as a board. Fortunately, there were four main players who really impressed. Fay Wray provided a persuasive account of an aristocratic beauty whose emotions ran hot, then cold. Joseph Schildkraut definitely made his presence felt as the ruthless General Pascal. Henry B. Walthall shone in all his scenes except the last (where it was obvious by the sudden change in lighting that a different photographer and director were at work). And Katherine De Mille (doubtless copying her dad, Cecil B.) certainly looked and acted the part of the imperious Rosa. While I didn't appreciate the film's sudden changes of mood or its jerky continuity (made even more conspicuous by the indiscriminate use of inter-titles), I particularly hated the frequent attempts at comedy relief, all of which fell jarringly flat. On the whole, the studio scenes were less impressive than the location-shot material. Many of the Mexican vistas of crowds and horsemen were shot with artistry and flair. They were truly staggering. Only occasionally were these exterior shots matched by an equal eye for drama in the studio-shot sequences. (One that springs to mind is an effectively long tracking shot that follows Madero as he leaves a crowded ballroom for the solitude of his office). The present patchwork quilt of a movie leaves me in no doubt that if its original conception had been followed, Viva Villa would have emerged as a creditable achievement. As it is, whilst not fatally flawed, it certainly ranks as a disappointment.

VIVA VILLA! (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1934), directed by Jack Conway, stars the Academy Award winning Wallace Beery ("The Champ" 1931) in one of his most notable film roles, that of the notorious Mexican bandit leader, Pancho Villa (1877-1923). Suggested by the book written by Edgcumb Finchon and O.B. Stade, the film itself is not so much an authentic biographical account on Villa's personal life, but, a fictional story scripted by Ben Hecht that gives its viewers an idea of what's to be shown: "FORWARD: This saga of the Mexican hero, Pancho Villa, does not come out of the archives of history. It is fiction woven out of truth, and inspired by a love of the half-legendary Pancho, and the glamorous country he served." For its eight minute prologue: "Mexico in the 1880s, a land cringing under the lone whip of Diaz the Tyrant," shows Pancho, the boy (Phillip Cooper) forced to witness his hard-working father (Frank Puglia) strung up at the whipping post for speaking out against a greedy Spanish landowner who has taken away his home and property along with his fellow peons. After the hundred lashes are carried out, the dead body is cut down, left on the street as a warning to the others. Later, Pancho, "the little avenger" during the night, awaits, stabs and kills his father's executioner, fleeing to the hills of Chihuahua. Years later, Pancho Villa, (Wallace Beery), the man, having earned the title of "La Cucaracha" (the cockroach), forms a bandit army, assisted by his trigger-happy henchman, Sierra (Leo Carrillo), to avenge the rich and give to the "peons." With the assistance of Johnny Sykes (Stuart Erwin), an American reporter for the New York World, Villa's name becomes well-known through the accounts printed in the newspaper. Don Felipe (Donald Cook) a wealthy landowner who sides with Villa's cause, introduces him to his friend, Francisco Madero (Henry B. Walthall), a gentle man known to all as "The Christ Fool." An eternal friendship forms as Madero offers Villa advise into helping him form a revolutionary Army. Though he does help with his cause, Madero is disappointed that Villa makes war as a bandit rather than a soldier. After the war, Villa, honored a hero by many, especially Don Felipe's sister, Teresa (Fay Wray), is soon exiled to El Paso, Texas, by orders of his rival, General Pascal (Joseph Schildkraut). After learning the assassination of President Madero, Villa returns to Mexico to avenge his friend's death, leading to another brutal revolution.Quite popular upon its release, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, VIVA VILLA! offers some very grim moments. Aside from the aforementioned flogging of Villa's father in the opening segment, another intense scene occurs indicating the method of torture towards General Pascal under Villa's orders. With females of minor importance, Fay Wray, the now legendary star of the original KING KONG (RKO Radio, 1933), surprisingly has a relatively small role as opposed to Katherine DeMille's temperamental Rosita Morales, as one of Villa's wives, who gathers more attention and screen time here. Wray's climatic moment occurs in a darkened room as her Teresa laughs hysterically at the angry Villa, forcing him to continually whip her, as shown through their silhouette images on the wall. This existing scene, among a few others, have vanished from circulating prints since the 1980s, shortening the original length from 115 to 109 minutes.Other members of the cast worth noting are: George E. Stone (Emilio Chavito, the artist who's rather draw pigeons than bulls); David Durand (The Mexican bugle boy who uses the American slang term, "ain't"); Paul Porcasi (The Priest); and, in smaller roles, Mischa Auer and Akim Tamiroff, among others.As much as its leading players could have been enacted by natural born Hispanic performers, such is not the case here. Beery's co-star, Leo Carrillo, would have made an agreeable Villa, with Gilbert Roland playing Sierra; and Mexican spitfire Lupe Velez in Fay Wray's part. Of the actors to have portrayed Pancho Villa in later years, Yul Brynnar or Telly Salavas for example, Beery, in mustache, large sombrero and Spanish dialect (which he tends to lose from time to rime) is as part of Beery as King Henry VIII or Captain Bligh is to Charles Laughton. Interestingly, Beery, having played Villa in the silent 1917 chaptered serial, PATRIA, would become a Mexican bandito once again in the western comedy, THE BAD MAN (MGM, 1941), where he not only physically resembles his Pancho Villa portrayal, but assumes the character name of Pancho Lopez. Stuart Erwin, who reportedly replaced Lee Tracy during production, might seem miscast at first, but acceptable considering how Tracy's familiar comedic style and gestures might have turned this bio-drama into a somewhat unintentional comedy.Reportedly controversial through its assumptions and enactment from the Mexicans point of view, VIVA VILLA may continue to be so today depending on its acceptance as a motion picture. The edited form taken from reissue prints of VIVA VILLA!, distributed to video cassette in 1993, is also the same presented on Turner Classic Movies cable channel. One can only hope a complete version of VIVA VILLA! will turn up again someday in honor of the man named Villa and the legendary song known as "La Cucaracha!" (***1/2)

While the story is a bit on the fanciful side, it still has a good period look, and some of photography and action sequences are excellent. Wallace Beery is not as hammy as usual and does a creditable job. Henry B. Walthall is good (as usual) as Francisco Madero and turns in the best performance of the movie. Interestingly enough, while some characters (Madero, Villa)actually use their real names, others such as John Reed, Victoriano Huerta and Rodolfo Fierro are fictionalized as Johnny Sykes, Pascal and Sierra, respectively. Perhaps the best thing about it is, despite when it was made it treats the subject matter with dignity and has a real respect for Mexico and Mexicans. Some of the shots look as though they were taken in the 1910s thanks to Jack Conway's and Howard Hawk's direction.

Viva Villa was a hard luck movie. Filmed in part on location in Mexico City, during production, a plane carrying movie footage to Culver City crashed, requiring reshoots of the lost material. Wallace Beery, always an obnoxious star, demanded extra salary before he would appear again in the lost scenes. Lee Tracy, who originally played the part of the newspaper reporter, while on location was accused of getting drunk and urinating from his balcony room onto revelers celebrating the Mexican Independence Day. Tracy's action caused a national scandal. MGM managed to smuggle him out of the country. Then Louis B. Mayer fired Tracy from MGM and also got him blacklisted. Tracy's replacement, Stuart Erwin, was terrible as the reporter. Due to the delays, Viva Villa did not get released until after July 1, 1934, the date the Motion Picture Production Code took effect. MGM had to make changes to meet new code requirements, such as a scene where Fay Wray's character is whipped. Jack Conway took over for Howard Hawks as director to finish the production, which may explain the change in the movie pacing. The movie starts off fast, with a great scene of Villa and his riders taking over a town and Villa issuing swift justice as the new judge in town. Viva Villa never maintains that pace. But,one big plus, Leo Carillo as Villa's homicidal sidekick is great.