Sovexportfilm presents
''A Mosfilm Production''
SERGUEl ElSENSTElN
EDWARD TlSSE
GRlGORY ALEXANDROV
QUE VlVA MEXlCO!
Mexico, 1931
Sergei Eisenstein, the film director.
His assitants: Edward Tisse, cameraman...
and me, Grigory Alexandrov, director.
How did we land in this amazing country?
Sergei Eisenstein's films of the 20's...
especially ''The Battleship Potemkin,'' won him renown.
He, and we along with him...
were invited to Hollywood to make a film.
But Eisenstein didn't see eye to eye...
with the Hollywood tycoons.
Helped by Upton Sinclair, the American writer...
we decided to shoot a film about Mexico.
But first there was much we had to learn...
about that country.
The great Mexican painters, Diego Rivera...
David Siqueiros...
and Jose Orozco...
were our guides and teachers.
We spent two months filming.
We travelled north to south, east to west...
driving thousands of miles along rugged roads.
A feature of this land...
struck us as amazing.
A hundred miles meant the difference between epochs...
separating the pre-Columbian Mexico...
from that of the time of the Spanish conquest...
the Mexico of the feudal rule...
from modern Mexico.
Eisenstein felt that this unusual country...
deserved an unusual film and that Mexico's tragic story...
could be told without actors or sets.
A script was written...
and we began making Que Viva Mexico!
Our filming crew...
consisted of only us three.
But we were young.
We were ready to move mountains.
Even so, we did not manage to complete shooting
or editing the film.
All our reels of film were held up
in Hollywood, where they had been developed and printed.
Later they landed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
They were turned over to us
only a short time ago...
after nearly half a century of negociations.
Eisenstein and Tisse
are no longer with us...
but what they did belongs to the living.
You will see the film...
as Eisenstein conceived it...
and as we planned it.
We do not know what the great director...
would have done with the picture today.
But using his script and drawings,
we have tried...
to get as close as possible to what he had in mind.
The film was to consist of several parts...
some close to being documentary and some acted.
On the whole, it was intended to be...
a colourful film symphony of Mexico.
QUE VlVA MEXlCO!
''Prologue''
The time in the prologue...
is eternity.
lt could all be taking place today...
or have happened 20 years ago...
or even a thousand years ago.
''The text is by Eisenstein. lt is read by S. Bondarchuk.''
Stone.
Gods.
People.
A land of sacred ruins and huge pyramids.
Men and women with the features
of their ancestors.
The pagan temples of holy cities.
A kingdom of death...
where the past dominates the present.
And faces like those hewn in stone-
like those...
of the Mexicans of old.
Symbolic reminder of the past:
a funeral
amidst dead ruins.
ln total bondage...
to the idea of death, of man's physical end.
Tropical Tehuantepec.
Here time flows slowly...
to the accomplishment of the rustle of the palm fronds.
The way of life remains unchanged for centuries.
At its dawn, the world must have been full...
of the same regal indolence.
''The Sandunga''
Girls sing the sandunga as they daydream of the future.
Full of pride in her youthful beauty.
Concepcion.
Her most cherished dream - a gold necklace.
A dream shared by every girl in Tehuantepec.
The necklace is her dowry, her key to marital bliss.
The woman works, she chooses a husband for herself...
and she brings him into their new house.
Matriarchate. Rule by the women.
Here the girls go to work early and save every copper...
to acquire a necklace of gold coins...
by the time they are 16 or 18.
Concepcion needs one more gold coin - just one -
for her dream to be realized.
May your necklace bring you happiness!
Abundio, the object of Concepcion's affection.
lsn't this what you wanted,
Concepcion?
What you dreamed of for so long?
The matter passes into the hands... of the mothers and matchmakers.
They inspect the dowry.
How many coins in the necklace?
Are they pure gold?
The whole population of Tehuantepec...
takes part in the event.
A slow, semi-vegetative existence.
A way of life...
that has not changed over the centuries.
As the years go by, new flowers blossom.
''Fiesta''
The action of this story is set...
during the Feast of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe.
But this is also an annual reminder...
of Spain's conversion of Mexico...
into a colony of bloodshed and suffering.
ln the 16th century.
Cortes conquered Mexico
The monks who came with him
wiped out pagan cults...
with fire and sword.
On pyramids once crowned
by Aztec and Toltec temples...
the Spaniards erected Catholic churches...
so as not to change the routes of the pilgrims...
who had been coming there for thousands of years.
A mystery play, in which the pilgrims who enact it...
portray the sufferings of Jesus.
Sharp prickles penetrate the bodies...
of those who make crosses out of cactus stems...
and, with these tied on their shoulders...
crawl for hours to the top of the pyramid.
Masks of devils,
pagan gods...
and Spanish conquistadors side by side.
The dance goes on from dawn to dusk.
Without a pause. Over and over again...
they repeat the same steps...
in honor of the Holy Virgin.
Or perhaps - who knows -
of a more ancient goddess -
the awesome mother of gods
Then the gory finale, the bullfight.
lntroduced by the Spaniards...
and now a national spectacle of the Mexicans.
David Liseaga, a famous Mexican matador.
His younger brother.
Baronito, a picador.
They call on their mother...
to say good-bye to her...
perhaps for the last time.
Today is a day when the toreros will kill bulls...
in honor of the Virgin.
The chosen queens of the bullfight.
The razor's edge...
between death and victory.
Among the local belles...
Baronito catches sight of his lady love...
Se?ora Calderon.
What else is there for the poor picador to do?
Mexico, tender and lyrical. And also cruel.
Above the high hacienda walls...
floats a plaintive song.
The peons beg the Holy Virgin
to ease their sufferings... on the day now dawning.
The time: the beginning of the 20th century...
during the reign of dictator Porfirio Diaz.
''Maguey''
Native to the hilly country of the state of Hidalgo...
is a large cactus named maguey.
These lands...
are a part of the Tetlapayac hacienda...
in Llanos de Apam.
Their lot, day after day, is to suck out...
the thick juice from the heart of the cactus.
The juice will ferment and be ready to drink.
The strong, milky white beverage
is called pulque.
Sebastian, a peon, is at work in the fields.
His betrothed, Maria, is brought by her parents.
Felicio, Sebastian's younger brother.
The landlords and his friends.
Every bride-to-be on the estate must be shown to the master.
The old man's daughter Sara... arrives with her cousin.
A family holiday.
The landlord celebrates.
Maria is forgotten.
The naive girl is unaware of what is in store for her.
Fate takes the form of a drunken guest.
Hatred sparks a plot.
Three of his comrades and Felicio, his brother-
They will help him to take revenge.
They want to free Maria.
Slumbering Mexico. Enslaved Mexico Fermenting Mexico
And finally, fighting revolutionary Mexico
But that last part remained undone
The picture's small budget was used up...
and shooting came to an end.
We returned home.
''Soldadera''
was intended to depict Mexico...
during the uprising of 1910
a country engulfed in the flames of civil war...
divided into hostile camps...
and then united by the victory of the revolution.
The Mexican people at arms...
were to be the heroes of this story.
Soldaderas are the wives of soldiers.
They broke into villages and captured provisions...
to feed their weary men.
The soldaderas were always beside the men.
The soldadera to us was to have been...
a symbol of Mexico itself -
a symbol of land whose people came to realize...
that strength lies in unity...
and that they must unite to fight reaction.
''Epilogue''
The time.1931
The place. Mexico.
Another holiday, the Day of the Dead.
On this day, November 2 ... the emblem of death
and, above all, skulls... are everywhere.
The day begins with mourning for the dead.
Revelry in cemeteries, eating on gravestones...
lovemaking in the cemetery shrubbery.
From candles and food in the graveyard...
to a rollicking carnival.
The Mexican scorns death.
What is more... the Mexican mocks death.
Chocolate coffins
complete with sugar corpse.
And at the day's end, all this goes...
into the bronzed bellies of Mexican children.
A skull under a minister's top hat...
a fireman's helmet, a policeman's cap...
a general's cocked hat.
Not a cult of death this, not the stillness of stone...
or the awesomeness of stone idols...
No!
But man's triumph over death through mockery of it.
The masks are removed.
Not sham skulls now but real ones.
The corpses of a doom class.
Whom will we see behind this mask?
A soldadera's son?
One of whose hands are destined to forge...
a truly free Mexico?
QUE VlVA MEXlCO!
This film was restored by:
Grigory Alexandrov
Editor:Esfir Tobak
Nikita Orlov
Nikolai Olonovsky
Yuri Yakushev
Victor Babushkin
Leonid Nekhoroshev
Vera Nikolskaya Raisa Lukina
Yuri Sobolev Alexander Goldstein
Chief consultant:
Rotislav Yurenev, D.Sc.
The footage shot in 1931 and 1932...
was processed and presented by USSR State Film Archives.
''The End''