Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23523 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-04-03
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: Russian
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.com
Hollywood's loss was Mexico's gain, as this glorious documentary will attest. Having failed to realize several projects in Hollywood, Russian film pioneer Sergei Eisenstein trekked to Mexico with producer Grigory Alexandrov and cameraman Eduard Tisse, and the famous writer Upton Sinclair as beneficiary. Their budget quickly ran out, and the film was never properly completed, but Alexandrov carefully assembled this version of Que Viva Mexico! in 1979, and the result is one of the most beautiful documentaries ever made. Although it was later criticized for presenting a fantasized view of Mexican culture, this remains a stunning example of Eisenstein's ability to meld people, politics, and ritual into a richly cinematic experience. Celebratory, socially alert, and at times even surreal, the film displays all of Eisenstein's revolutionary techniques while proving that his narrative style could have flourished in Hollywood. Instead, this marvelous film stands as a testament to what might have been. --Jeff Shannon

Additional features
Also included on this valuable DVD is the 20-minute short "Romance Sentimentale," which Eisenstein created with collaborators Alexandrov and Tisse in 1930, just prior to making Que Viva Mexico! In some respects it's an Eisensteinian Fantasia, combining image and music (a famous Russian love song) to create a visual tone poem. Even more impressive, in terms of Eisenstein's passion as a political storyteller, is the rare 20-minute excerpt from Misery and Fortune of Woman, which dramatizes the plight of European women seeking abortions under oppressive conditions. It's a small, gut-wrenching masterpiece, and hasn't lost a bit of its relevance. --Jeff Shannon

From the Back Cover
Having revolutionized film editing through such masterworks of montage as Potemkin and Strike, Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein emigrated west in hopes of testing the capabilities of the American film industry. Quickly ostracized from Hollywood, Eisenstein, Grigory Alexandrov and photographer Eduard Tisse (at the urging of author Upton Sinclair) wandered south of the border where they began filming a highly stylized documentary on the people and volatile social climate of Mexico. Unfortunately, a lack of funds prohibited the film's completion and the famed director was unable to edit the film. In 1979, by referring to Eisenstein's extensive notes and sketches, Alexandrov assembled the most definitive version of the film-as close to Eisenstein's vision as one is ever likely to come.
A blend of the ethnographic, the political, the scenic and the surreal, Que Viva Mexico! is nothing short of brilliant and remains superior to the legion of films it strongly influenced: Welles' It's All True, Jodorowsky's El Topo and the works of Sergio Leone. With sequences devoted to the Edenic land of Tehuantepec, the savage majesty of the bullfight, the struggles of the noble peon and the hypnotic imagery of the Day of the Dead, Que Viva Mexico is a vivid tapestry of Mexican life which (thanks to Alexandrov's careful restoration) takes its rightful place alongside Eisenstein's other legendary works.
Also included on this DVD are Romance Sentimentale (1930), an attempt to apply Soviet montage theories to sound/visual editing, and on amazing rediscovery: Misery and Fortune of Woman (1929). Intended to encourage legal and sanitary birth/abortion clinics in Europe, this remarkable film is also a stunning dramatization of the plight of working class women, displaying all the earmarks of Soviet montage and the distinctive genius of Segei Eisenstein.

Customer Reviews

Remarkable! Pure Visual Poetry
Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico is a film that captures the majesty, awe, and tragedy of Mexico better than any other I have ever seen. And it does so not with dialogue or plot, but rather thru "a sequence of short novellas" (Eisenstein's words) which each develop and play convincingly into the next. Each of these vignettes to me display a celebration of real Mexican culture and a subtle depreciation of those things which came from Spain. They evoke the heart of true Mexican patriotism as if it were struck directly from a Rivera mural. For anyone interested in Mexico or Mexican cinema, Que Viva Mexico is an absolute must.

Que Viva Mexico is certainly one of the most famous "unfinished" films in history, with a tragic star-laced history about which whole books have been published. In a few words, Sergei Eisenstein went to Hollywood but was almost immediately ostracized by the old studio moguls. Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin led him to the famed moralist, communist, and novelist Upton Sinclair, who agreed to finance a south-of-the border film. The budget was $25k and shooting was to take four months. Sinclair's brother-in-law was to tag along and supervise. A couple of Eisenstein's Russians comrades would handle the cinematography and equipment.

Exactly what happened after that is a matter of some dispute, including countless cross and counter accusations of extremely lewd behavior and fabulous revelry. What is certain is that after 11 months in Mexico the film was still missing its final section and Sinclair pulled the plug on the whole operation. Furious, he then managed to block Eisenstein's return to America and convince Stalin he had been a poor communist. Sinclair kept all the footage and Eisenstein was sent back to Russia in shame.

Eisenstein still believed he could make a great film out of his footage and fought to get it back, but Sinclair refused and had it edited by his own Hollywood producer. From this work came the feature Thunder Over Mexico (1933) and the shorts Eisenstein in Mexico (1933) and Death Day (1934). While these versions influenced great future directors like Welles, Huston, Bunuel, and Leone, they were not the real vision of the great director. In the 1970s, the Russians finally got the reels, and Grigori Aleksandrov, who had been there and assisted with the original filming, put it back together following Eisenstein's original plan.

Back to the film, it is essentially a silent with narration, a music track, and limited sound effects added. I don't have any problem with this as the alternative would have been to fabricate intertitles which would have been even less natural. Anyway talkies were already completely dominant by 1932 and Chaplin used a sound effect track in all his later silents. The musical track is sheer magic and certainly benefits from the extra years. There is an abrupt break when the final unfilmed section is reached, before we are taken back to the Day of the Dead epilogue. Frankly, I don't think much was lost here: Eisenstein was right when he said he didn't need that last segment to finish the film. The third segment was already just a bit long, and adding the fourth (a continuation of the third) would have unbalanced the film. Hence I would have just run the third segment straight into a more somber start of the epilogue. But the way it was done does show us what was "lost", so in that sense it is valid. My only qualm with this DVD is the fact that it doesn't have Spanish subtitles, as I think all Mexicans should experience this film!

One last thing: the 1946 epoca dorada classic Enamorada by famed Mexican director Emilio Fernandez could be seen as a sort of tribute film to Eisenstein and Que Viva Mexico, as it basically fills out a story based on the sodadera lost segment of this film.

The Mexico We'll Never See Again!
I was introduced to Eisenstein in college (Radio/TV/Film), but saw the film (Russian soundtrack -- Spanish subtitles) while living in Mexico.

Eisenstein's gift to us is two-fold. First, the sheer artistry of his images. Second, and even more important to me, the images themselves were drawn from a Mexico that no longer exists. Maguey plants so tall that a man can "STAND" on a leaf more than 20 feet above the ground to get a better shot at his enemy! Young girls preparing for a wedding in the Yucatan -- wearing only grass skirts as they paddle dugout canoes from hut to hut built on stilts above the water.

The people are timeless. The rural Mexican is an Aztec who politely condescends to speak Spanish. You see that in every face on which the camera rests.

The film was assembled by the original cameraman, working with the master's original shooting script (with editing instructions in Eisenstein's own handwriting in the margins).

Obviously "pieced" together as a compendium of what was meant to be several films, these vignettes are truly a classic treasure!

Eisenstein has captured the elusive soul of Mexico!
Eisenstein's film crew pieced together this incomplete opus of the histroy and spirit of Mexico years after the great director's death. The result is a mixture of documentary and docu-drama that reflects the great Soviet filmmaker's unique sensibilities and dramatic stylings. The story of the film's genesis is the subject of several books on the art of Eisenstein's cinema. The film is presented in a collage of segments that delve under the masks and into the layers of the mysterious Mexican soul. The film is a must if you are a Mexicophile or just a film buff.