Viva Villa

Whether you enjoy 'Viva Villa!' is dependent on what your feelings are on star Wallace Beery. Have found him a lot of fun in some roles, in others he overdoes the hammy bluster and takes one out of the film. So my stance on Beery is mixed. The supporting cast is a quite talented one. Am familiar with Jack Conway, though as others have said the great Howard Hawks started it, and have liked (a lot in most cases) what has been seen of his work. The subject matter was very fascinating.

Found myself quite mixed on 'Viva Villa!', leaning towards moderately sort of liking it but not without having some big reservations with it. It is a long way from being bad, with a good deal to admire and is quite entertaining. It just doesn't do an interesting man with an interesting story justice and no it is not just that most of it is fictionalised and even romanticised. Despite its good merits, its distracting flaws made 'Viva Villa!' an uneven experience for me.

'Viva Villa!' looks great. Some may argue that the sets are obviously studio bound, but they nonetheless are suitably grand in scale and look and still make the jaw drop today. The black and white photography is beautiful, though imagine how the film would have looked like in colour, it perhaps may have given the film even more sweep. The music score is stirring enough and it is expertly directed by Conway.

Parts of the script compel and have an amusing irony, while the story does have some rollicking action and some quite epic crowd scenes. The supporting cast generally do quite well, with an attractive Fay Wray bringing heart to the proceedings and Joseph Schildkraut and Henry B. Walthall (as the film's most colourful supporting character) suitably ruthless. Donald Cook also does admirably.

Beery though was more troubling in the lead role and a lot of the problem was to do with how the character was written. He does give it everything and is charismatic, but the characterisation felt inconistent and like the writers weren't sure what they wanted the character to be. The script has moments but tended to be awkward and much of the humour felt overdone in use and how it was delivered.

The story could be dull and too slight, very on the surface and with no real depth. A shorter length of about 15-20 minutes would have helped. Generally the characters were colourless stereotypes and some of the portrayal of Mexicans don't hold up particularly well today and could be seen as tasteless. While the supporting cast were generally fine, for me Stuart Erwin was bland though props to him for being a practically last minute replacement.

On the whole, not bad but heavily flawed. 5.5/10

In various venues, I've read some film writers' claims that the whipping of Fay Wray's character, while she laughs, was deleted due to the newly enforced production code at the time of this film's release. This claim is not accurate. The current TCM copy doesn't show this scene, however, the full whipping scene was regularly shown, in the 1960s, on either NYC station WNEW 5 or WCBS 2 whenever "Viva Villa" was aired. Another now-deleted scene showed Leo Carillo's character lining up captured federal soldiers, three at a time, front to back, and executing them with one bullet in order to save ammunition. I remember thinking how violent this film was for its time.

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.

About the only thing that IS true is that Pancho Villa fought on the side of Madero in the Mexican revolution. But you've got Wallace Beery doing what Beery did best - playing an amoral character as endearingly as is possible.

The film shows Villa's history back to childhood, when apparently his father was whipped to death for daring to speak up for his rights to the local land baron. In fact, nobody today knows exactly who Villa's father was. He is shown robbing his way through Mexico until he meets Francisco Madera and becomes quite enamored of the little fellow, played by Henry B. Walthall. There was a General Pascual Orozco - probably the treacherous person Joseph Schildkraut was supposed to be playing - but his fate was not what was shown in the film.

So the big picture is that this is a completely fictional biography of Pancho Villa who changes from bandit to revolutionary officer to exile and ultimately to - president of Mexico???

The film tries to deflect blame from all of the things he does by claiming that Villa could not tell right from wrong and was thus confused when people tried to hold him to account. He creates a persistent and ultimately fatal enemy in Don Filipe when he causes the death of his sister, played by Fay Wray. I've seen several versions of what happens to Wray at Villa's hands, and all but one version is vague, probably because this film was released almost simultaneously with the inception of the production code. As for what actually happened to Villa after Madero - the truth would probably been more interesting although not as romantic as the film, and the truth would definitely have been harder to film for it would have involved the invasion of the US, a counter American incursion into Mexico, Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing, airstrikes, German espionage, and a stolen skull.

An interesting aside - Lee Tracy initially was playing the role of the field journalist rather than Stuart Erwin. Tracy had left Warner Brothers the year before for MGM. But his career with MGM was over when, while on location in Mexico, a drunken Tracy relieved himself on his balcony and unknowingly on the heads of several Mexican federales standing below.

The life of Mexican rebel and maverick Pancho Villa is brought to the screen is in this highly fictional but yet log-line or plot points accurate story. This is clear to anyone because the opening has one of those disclaimers that states that though the story is true, the movie has fictionalized certain scenes and scenarios but is in essence a true portrait. Whatever! That said, despite unexpected tonal shifts (Howard Hawks was the original director before Jack Conway was brought in and re-shot a lot of his footage. It makes me wonder how the new Exorcist movie that Renny Harlin is reshooting will play) the film is a touching portrait of a man of the people who could never lead a nation. It does not patronize the dastardly or generally inhumane tactics of Villa. As far as Villa was concerned, it is war and one must vanquish the enemies completely. Take no prisoners was his approach. It has the typical, rotten scoundrel and bandit to careful redemption of the soul arc but is handled atypical which is a plus. Beery, one of the biggest stars Hollywood ever produced is solid in the role and should have gotten an Oscar nomination. Directing is solid except for sudden comic ouvres among the chaos stopping the movie from achieving rich resonance but overall enabling it to still work. Sets are huge, action sequences are passable and scenarios and dialogue are either very good or cliched in certain respects. But I think the ending of the movie has one of the best written scenes and final lines I've ever heard. I won't spoil it but it lets you know that what you've seen and read about is essentially a myth and legend and that's what people choose to remember and live on. Kinda like the ending of the movie Big Fish.