Sadly Over-hyped

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Viva Villa!, and its bookend film Treasure Island made just afterwards by Wallace Beery are two of my favourite fiction films from the Golden Age of Hollywood action and adventure. Both are tour-de-force performances by the inimitable Beery, and although chockful of thrills and spills the main entertainment value lies in Beery's screen persona.Story purports to relate the meteoric rise and eventual sideways move of Pancho Villa, Mexican rebel, patriot, murdering raping thug in his quest to give the land back to the peons which had been violently taken from them years before by the arrogant aristocracy. He has a childlike trust in Madero the benign statesman who is almost deified by the movie, and has constant assistance from Sierra played by Leo Carillo, his psychotic sidekick. Fay Wray got a couple of appearances in but some of her scenes were apparently cut when the Hays Code came into force. Based on fact and fiction it's an entertaining ride - yet another Revolution Betrayed, episodic because of production problems they had but always engrossing if you can get over the technical limitations (mainly dodgy back projection).But it's Beery's performance that's so breath-taking: as a real-life dislikable person he successfully plays a thoroughly dislikable swine (and in Treasure Island, too) as a lovable overgrown simple child, except he'd like to try pulling the legs off soldiers instead. You root for him all the way throughout his murderous career, go misty eyed when he does, agree with every cause of his anger. The pathos he introduces at various points in the tale is indescribable and unique – and it's made clear that everyone loves him, except for Fay Wray's character and her brother played by that marvellous wooden actor Don Cook. Some favourite bits: defending his savage tactics to Madero: "You can't win a revolution with Love, you've got to have Hate"; letting embedded journalist Johnny have his way and deciding on a whim to take Santa Rosalia; the telegram from Pancho to Madero stating "nobody killed much" in taking Juarez; Johnny's summation to Pancho "you're better than News, you're History"; Pancho's tearful last orders to his troops; telling a disgusted Cook "Alright. The poor always was the Beast. Only this time we're not frightened"; the thought of the method of execution of General Pasquale; being fed his dying words "Forgive me? Johnny…what I done wrong?", childlike to the end and playing on your heartstrings to a stirring musical score; so many more.The subject history is a bit sketchy so if for no other reason watch this for Beery - to my mind this and Treasure Island are his best performances - not a great actor but in here he's wondrous to behold. The power of film is frightening.

After witnessing his father being whipped to death, grown-up Mexican bandit Wallace Beery (as Pancho Villa) becomes his country's revolutionary war hero. Boozy reporter Stuart Irwin (as Johnny Sykes) and peace-loving liberator Henry B. Walthall (as Francisco Madero) are important allies. Nurturing a taste for ladies and liquor, Mr. Beery marries Spanish spitfire Katherine De Mille (the real-life daughter of director Cecil B., as Rosita Morales). Later, Beery is tempted to add beautiful Fay Wray (as Teresa) to his harem.The Mexican armies sing "La Cucaracha, la Cucaracha!" while future "East Side Kid" David Durand plays the bugle.Beery's vanquished rival Joseph Schildkraut (as General Pascal) suffers a torturous fate, but dastardly Donald Cook (as Don Felipe) gets a last shot. MGM production values are high for this hammy, heavy-handed star vehicle, wisely introduced as "fictionalized." With "box office" Beery at the helm, "Viva Villa!" was a hit. It won critical acclaim at Venice, where Berry was the festival's "Best Actor". In a brief scene, the real-life son of early movie idol Francis X. Bushman plays a nerdy newspaperman ("Wallace Calloway"). ****** Viva Villa! (4/10/34) Jack Conway ~ Wallace Beery, Stuart Irwin, Henry B. Walthall, Donald Cook

I'm still not clear on how MGM got away with this film. Pancho Villa had only been dead for 10 years and his famous raid on Columbus, New Mexico almost 20 years. Surely not enough time for people to have forgotten Villa or what he did.But the most famous thing he did, raid into the USA and provide a pretext for intervention into Mexican affairs, is completely forgotten by this film. The Villa we see here is a lovable lug of a guy, a typical Wallace Beery part who gets his social conscience awakened by Francisco Madero and gives up banditry to become a revolutionary.If you're a big fan of Wallace Beery and liked him in such films as Min and Bill and Treasure Island than Viva Villa is simply an extension of the characters he played there. Actually I think the most interesting character in the film is that of Francisco Madero. Henry B. Walthall's performance is the best and I wish Walthall had starred in a film where he was the central character. Madero was as you see in the film a man of high ideals, betrayed and assassinated by his supporters. But it was hardly Pancho Villa who took vengeance on his betrayers. After long time Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz was overthrown in 1911 and then Madero assassinated in 1912, Mexico fell apart much like the former Yugoslavia did almost 20 years ago. Civil war raged there for a generation. Eventually it united under the PRI party which elected all of its presidents until Vicente Fox.I've never really liked this film, it stray so far from the facts it's laughable. The players go through their familiar roles and it's a good cast that Howard Hawks later Jack Conway put through their paces. Of course the most famous story coming out of this film is about Lee Tracy getting blotto and going out on a balcony and raining on some Mexican soldiers. Got him fired from the film and Stu Erwin got the break and Tracy's part as the newspaper reporter who popularizes Villa.If in fact you consider it a break Erwin got to be in Viva Villa.

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.