Viva Zapata!

Hollywood's never known how to handle the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921), vacillating between romanticized epics like Viva Villa! (1934) and cynical adventures of The Wild Bunch variety. Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952) desperately wants to make a serious statement on revolutionary politics. Despite stylish direction and a solid cast, it makes a muddle of its message.  

Emiliano Zapata (Marlon Brando) leads. He allies with President Madero (Harold Gordon), but becomes an outlaw again when General Huerta (Frank Silvera) overthrows Madero. Zapata fights Huerta's government, along with internal dissidents: his brother Eufemio (Anthony Quinn) and shifty subordinate (Joseph Wiseman) have their own ideas on waging revolution. Zapata joins with Pancho Villa (Alan Reed) to capture Mexico City, but immediately recuses himself of power. Villa's successor Carranza enlists Aguirre in a devious plot to bring Zapata to heel.

Working off a screenplay by John Steinbeck (!), Viva Zapata! intends. Beyond genre-mandated thrills and scenery, Kazan tries to mix political drama and character study. The story unfolds in clipped yet sentimental prose that seems more Hemingway than Steinbeck. Zapata's solidness contrasts well with Mexico's round robin of hapless leaders: offered the Presidency by Pancho Villa, he immediately refuses. A Mexican Cincinnatus, Zapata remains pure by returning to his hacienda. 

But Kazan's message feels compromised. Much of Zapata has an agreeable roughness, highlighting themes of class conflict and cyclical revolution. Zapata's followers have grants dating back to Spanish rule, which doesn't remotely faze Diaz: legality's followed only when convenient. Certainly Madero's adherence to legal strictures allows Huerta to checkmate him. And the violence is shockingly blunt, culminating in a gun-down double cross presaging Bonnie & Clyde. Yet Zapata's politics seem curiously formless and desultory, beyond wanting to save peasants from evil landowners. That's something both Che Guevara and the Three Stooges have no trouble getting behind. 

For the most part, Zapata makes a disappointingly conventional hero. There's some edginess in his subversive rhetoric and sexual charisma, but he's a generically apolitical rebel doing the right thing. His conflict between middle class comfort and rural background, and his testy wooing of wife Josefa (Jean Peters) prove less compelling. He's even less successful as a symbol. Kazan assures us that Zapata's less important than his followers, but this undercuts the Great Man grandstanding. We're reminded of The Magnificent Seven assuring us that "only the farmers have won."

Viva Zapata! scores thanks to Kazan's assured direction. Stylish yet less showy than other "great directors," Kazan matches Steinbeck's terse prose with almost elliptical stylization. Joseph McDonald employs deep focus photography not only in darkened interiors but expansive battle scenes, with Christ imagery and revolutionary tableaux resembling Eisenstein. There are impressive set pieces when Zapata "summons" peasants to rescue him, and Madero meets a pathetic fate. There's also facile elements, like Zapata's white horse that lives on as an obnoxious symbol. It's artistic yet (mostly) subdued, a solid combination.

Zapata! inspired a whole sub-genre of Westerns, projecting contemporary concerns onto Revolutionary Mexico. Indeed, they're informally known as Zapata Westerns (more flattering than Jenni Calder's "Chili con carnage" label). This genre reached its apex in the '60s, where The Professionals and The Wild Bunch largely channeled Vietnam-era cynicism into violent mayhem. In contrast, Spaghetti Westerns wholeheartedly embraced politics: A Bullet for the General turns Kazan's ambivalent cynicism into crude Marxist agitprop, while Sergio Leone's Duck You Sucker! swipes several key images, including Huerta watching Madero's execution through a rainy windshield.

Marlon Brando does surprisingly well as a hardened idealist. Brando brings his usual method tricks to the part, but it's less obviously affected than many of his turns. Anthony Quinn won an Oscar playing Eufemio, boisterous and larger-than-life in agreeable fashion. Joseph Wiseman does more subtle work, conveying villainy through a chilling sneer. Jean Peters is less successful changing from haughty bourgeois to devoted peasant wife. Zapata's rivals are represented in a gallery of impressive character turns: condescending Fay Roope, meek Harold Gordon, ruthless Frank Silvera and boorish Alan Reed.

Viva Zapata! presents some interesting ideas indifferently. As an exploration of revolutionary politics, it might have done better to flesh out Zapata's beliefs beyond do-gooderism.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Prior to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire reigned as the 900 pound gorilla of American theater. Tennessee Williams' Southern-fried melodrama hit the Broadway stage in December 1947, earning universal praise for its naturalist acting, spearheaded by Marlon Brando, and edgy content. Four years later it leaped to the big screen with its cast and director (Elia Kazan) intact, proving equally successful (and controversial).

Very much ahead of its time, Streetcar retains most of its power. While it never quite transcends being a "filmed play," Williams' barbed writing (adapted by Oscar Saul) and the excellent cast drive the drama. 

Blanche Du Bois (Vivien Leigh) arrives in New Orleans, fleeing a shady past. She takes with sister Stella (Kim Newton), happily married (or so she thinks) to Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), a salesman given to towering rages. Blanche's presence stirs up tension between Stella and Stanley, even when Stella discovers she's pregnant. Blanche fends off the advances of Stanley's army buddy Mitch (Karl Malden) while deliberately antagonizing Stanley. Stanley gets his own back by investigating Blanche's past, and deciding to ruin her one way or another.

The oeuvre of Tennessee Williams serves as a brutal deconstruction of Southern gentility. Beneath the veneer of charm, mannered etiquette and courtly accents lie a nasty collection of neuroses: sexual dysfunction, frustrated dreams, even outright insanity. Casting Vivien Leigh as Blanche proves a subversive masterstroke: Scarlett O'Hara becomes a fallen woman whose gentility mask a dark past. Set in muggy, claustrophobic New Orleans, this hothouse drama becomes unbearable.

Most obviously, Streetcar exudes sexuality in a way unique for its area, matched by few even today. Stanley constantly sweats through T-shirts and even getting a beefcake scene. It's implied Stella puts up with his towering rages out of pure physical attraction. While Mitch initially seems a subdued gentleman, his dates with Blanche end in crude passes. Blanche seems to encourage and mock these reactions, baffling Mitch and driving Stanley to a horrible denouement.

Blanche provides the movie's rotten center. Her cultivated snobbishness extends only so far as her accent. She relishes putting down the "Pollack" Stanley and teasing Mitch's affections, their confusion and anger encouraging her sense of superiority. It's easy enough to see through Blanche (if her life really were so great, why's she living with a poor relation?) but she's more than a mere poser. Why does she invite a kiss from a teenaged messenger? Why does she brazenly insult Stanley even when it jeopardizes Stella? It's one of cinema's more disturbing trips to madness, the finale achieving a Sunset Blvd. level of Gothic pantomime.

Elia Kazan struggles to keep Streetcar from being that most dreaded thing, a filmed play. True, Harry Stradling provides brooding deep focus photography, and there's a memorably grimy, suffocating atmosphere throughout. While no doubt intentional, the lack of opening up (few outdoor scenes, no comic relief) feels uncinematic. Like Look Back in Anger, the movie's so closed in on its angst that it barely breaths. Kazan showed more finesse on Viva Zapata! and On the Waterfront, which are undeniably movies.

Marlon Brando made an impression in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950), but became a screen icon here. Besides his raw masculine energy, Brando mixes towering anger with inner pain and groveling pathos. Brando's performance is broad and expressive, yet in a way that feels natural. Stanley is an overwrought character, given to crude, boorish gestures rather than articulation. Brando embodies that perfectly, making this human credibly flawed and real.

Vivien Leigh allows her neuroses to gradually shine through Blanche's genteel pose, with a tragic payoff. It's a performance no less impressive than Brando. Kim Hunter (A Matter of Life and Death) makes a likeable foil. Karl Malden won an Oscar (and a career) for his subdued supporting turn; he'd re-team with Brando and Kazan for On the Waterfront before becoming an A-list character actor.

While flawed, A Streetcar Named Desire is undeniably powerful. Elia Kazan does justice to Tennessee Williams, presenting a potentially overwrought story with considerable force.

On the Waterfront

You'll have two film reviews. I rewatched two of my old favorites, On the Waterfront and The Train in the last twenty-four hours. Instead of writing new reviews, I'll be lazy and copy and paste my old IMDB comments for them here.

On the Waterfront

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is a failed ex-boxer who is now essentially working as an errand boy for crooked longshoreman union boss/mob chieftain Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). Malloy rebuffs attempts from the police to enlist him for questioning when one of his friends is murdered by Friendly's thugs, afraid that he will be perceived as a "rat" by his co-workers at the docks. However, the inquiries of his dead friend's sister (Eve Marie Sant) and the driven local priest (Karl Malden), along with the refusal of his hit-man brother (Rod Steiger) to follow boss's orders and kill him, drives Terry to do the right thing - no matter what the cost.

"On the Waterfront" is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of American cinema. Directed by Elia Kazan, who is best remembered for his role in aiding the HUAC investigations into Hollywood in the early '50s, the film has been read as an attempt to explain his involvement in the investigation, with the mob standing in for the Communist Party and the dock workers as his colleagues in Hollywood, many of whom were blacklisted and lost work over the investigation - and many of whom never forgave Kazan.

This is certainly an interesting way to look at the film, and there is some credence to it. At first, Terry, a generally good guy who has hit a rough patch in his life, is reluctant to aide the Federal investigation because he doesn't want to betray his friends and he fears the backlash against him. But the efforts of the lovely sister of his best friend and the kindly but driven preacher drive him to do the right thing - and ultimately his colleagues stand beside him and reveal Johnny Friendly for what he is - a cowardly crook - expressing Kazan's hope that he would be forgiven for turning against Communists in the film industry

.In real life, this didn't quite happen; Kazan was continually ridiculed for his role in the HUAC investigation, which, for all its excesses, was not chasing after ghosts. To be fair, unlike the (now provably real) Communists in the State Department and elsewhere in the US government/military, liberal intellectuals and artists in Hollywood who were seduced by Communist idealism weren't really a threat to American security, as misguided as their views might appear today. Nonetheless, it's something of a shame that such a talented director was so ridiculed for doing what he thought was right by his clannish colleagues.

Politics aside, "On the Waterfront" still holds up very well today, in no small part due to the acting. This is one of Marlon Brando's finest performances, when he was at the height of his talent, well before he became an overweight caricature of himself. Terry Malloy is a character who, while not particularly bright or insightful, is driven by a determination that there is something wrong with blindly sticking up for his friends. Once he sees what his bosses are, he risks everything in order to do what's right. He's bitter about his failed boxing career, which we learn was largely sabotaged by his brother Charley, and his inability to connect with something greater than being "a bum". Every scene Brando is in is brilliant; this is, simply put, one of the greatest performances of all time, completely naturalistic and utterly believable.The cast is filled with other brilliant actors, with Eve Marie Sant wonderful as Edie, the girl who Terry falls for and drives him in the right direction. Karl Malden gives a powerful performance as Father Barry, a truly inspirational character who is completely honest and clear-cut in his views of right and wrong. Lee J. Cobb is wonderfully understated as Johnny Friendly, with Rod Steiger delivering the finest performance of his career (with the possible exception of "Doctor Zhivago") as Terry's conflicted brother (the famous taxi scene between the two is justly considered one of the finest acting moments in film history). Like Brando, Steiger would become a self-deprecating ham late in his career, but here he gives a truly powerful, believable portrayal of a man torn between love for his brother and serving his boss.

There are so many aspects that one could focus on with the film, and I'm limited in what I can say. Skilfully directed and shot, with a wonderful script by Budd Schulberg and one of the greatest casts ever assembled, "On the Waterfront" stands today as a powerful, inspiring drama. 9/10