¡Qué viva México!

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Eisenstein holding a skull made of sugar. Skulls and skeletons appeared in ¡Que Viva México! depicting the Day of the Dead festival.

¡Qué viva México! (Russian: Да здравствует Мексика!) is a film project begun by the Russian avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein. It would have been an episodic portrayal of Mexican culture and politics from pre-Conquest civilization to the Mexican revolution. Production was beset by difficulties and was eventually abandoned. Jay Leyda and Zina Voynow call it his "greatest film plan and his greatest personal tragedy".^[1]

The footage that Eisenstein shot has been used for several others (Thunder Over Mexico, Eisenstein in Mexico, Death Day, and Time in the Sun). The title ¡Qué viva México! refers to the reconstruction made by Grigory Alexandrov.^[2]

[edit] Eisenstein and Mexico

In the early twentieth century, many intellectuals and artists associated with the European avant-gardes were fascinated by Latin America in general, and by Mexico in particular: for the French artist and leader of the Surrealist movement André Breton, for instance, Mexico was almost the incarnation of Surrealism.^[3] And as film historian David Bordwell notes, "like many Leftists, Eisenstein was impressed that Mexico has created a socialist revolution in 1910".^[4] His fascination with the country dated back at least to 1921, when at the age of twenty-two "his artistic career started with a Mexican topic" as he put on a theatrical version of the Jack London story The Mexican in Moscow.^[5] Film scholar Inga Karetnikova details this production as a classic example of avant-garde aesthetics, an exercise in form rather than documentary realism; but "indirectly," she argues, "he did recreate the Mexican atmosphere". Above all, he saw in the Mexican revolution an instance of a "zealous idealism" that was also "close to Eisenstein, just as it was to the entire generation of Soviet avant-garde of the early 1920s".^[6]

Some years later, in 1927, Eisenstein had the opportunity to meet the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who was visiting Moscow for the celebrations of the Russian revolution's tenth anniversary. Rivera had seen Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin, and praised it by comparing it to his own work as a painter in the service of the Mexican revolution; he also "spoke obsessively of the Mexican artistic heritage", describing the wonders of Ancient Aztec and Mayan art and architecture.^[7] The Russian director wrote that "the seed of interest in that country . . . nourished by the stories of Diego Rivera, when he visited the Soviet Union . . . grew into a burning desire to travel there".^[8]

[edit] Plot summary

Eisenstein behind the camera directing ¡Qué viva México! on the Quetzalcoatl pyramid at Teotihuacán.

[edit] Original vision

¡Qué viva México! was left unfinished by Eisenstein, and in any case was never envisaged in terms of a single linear plot. However, the film was highly structured, and was to consist of four "novellas" or "scenarios" plus a prologue and epilogue.^[9] As Bordwell notes, the precise order and content of these episodes "was constantly changing", but "the overall film would trace the history of Mexico from precolonial times through Spanish conquest to contemporary times".^[10] Each episode have its own distinct style, be "dedicated to a different Mexican artist", and would "also base itself on some primal element (stone, water, iron, fire, air)".^[11] The soundtrack in each case would feature a different Mexican folk song.^[12] Moreover, each episode would tell the story of a romantic couple; and "threading through all parts was the theme of life and death, culminating in the mockery of death".^[11]

[edit] Alexandrov's reconstruction

In Alexandrov's reconstruction, which attempts to be as faithful as possible to Eisenstein's original vision, the film unfolds as follows:

Prologue

Set in the time of the Maya civilization in Yucatan.

Sandunga

Life including marriage and motherhood in Tehuantepec.^[13]

Maguey

About the pulque industry under the rule of Porfirio Díaz.^[14]

Fiesta

Depicting bullfighting in the Spanish colonial era.^[15]

Soldadera

Story of the woman soldiers involved in the Mexican Revolution.^[16]

Epilogue

Showing Mexico at the time of filming, and the celebration of the Day of the Dead.

[edit] Style

Epic in scope and conceived in multiple episodes like Eisenstein's later Ivan the Terrible, ¡Qué viva México! is also comparable to Alexander Dovzhenko's 1930 film Earth due to the vast scope, and the emphasis on death as a central theme.^[17] It shared with Viva Villa! the word "viva" in the title and a hacienda used as a filming location. Eisenstein took notice of these similarities and enjoyed this later film.^[18]

[edit] Context

By the time of ¡Qué viva México!, Eisenstein had established his career making films in Russia and was traveling in Europe.^[19] In late April 1930, Jesse L. Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered the opportunity to make a film in the United States.^[20] He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930. However, this arrangement failed. Eisenstein's idiosyncratic and artistic approach to cinema was incompatible with the more formulaic and commercial approach of American studios. Eisenstein proposed a biography of munitions tycoon Sir Basil Zaharoff and a film version of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, and more fully developed plans for a film of Sutter's Gold by Jack London, but on all accounts failed to impress the studio's producers.^[21] Paramount then proposed a movie version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.^[22] This excited Eisenstein, who had read and liked the work, and had met Dreiser at one time in Moscow. Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930, but Paramount disliked it completely and, additionally, found themselves intimidated by Major Frank Pease,^[23] president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-semite and anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. Seventeen days later, on October 23, 1930, by "mutual consent" Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract null and void, and the Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow, at Paramount's expense.^[24]

Eisenstein was thus faced with returning home an image of failure. The Soviet film industry was solving the sound film issue without him, and his films, techniques and theories were becoming increasingly attacked as 'ideological failures' and prime examples of formalism at its worst by the Stalinists, as the Soviet film industry came increasingly under their sway. Many of his theoretical articles from this period, such as "Eisenstein on Disney," have surfaced decades later as seminal scholarly texts used as curriculum in film schools around the world. A last-minute reprieve came from Charlie Chaplin, who arranged for Eisenstein to meet with a sympathetic benefactor in the person of American socialist author Upton Sinclair. Sinclair's works had been accepted by – and were widely read in – the USSR, and were known to Eisenstein. Conversely, Sinclair was a fan of Eisenstein's film work and looked forward to the opportunity to assist the artist. Between the end of October 1930 and Thanksgiving of that year, Sinclair had secured an extension of Eisenstein's absences from the USSR, and permission for him to travel to Mexico to make a film to be produced by Sinclair and his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair, and three other investors organized as the Mexican Film Trust.^[25]

On November 24, Eisenstein signed a contract with the Trust "upon the basis of Eisenstein's desire to be free to direct the making of a picture according to his own ideas of what a Mexican picture should be, and in full faith in Eisenstein's artistic integrity".^[26] The contract also stipulated that the film would be "non-political", that immediately available funding came from Mrs. Sinclair in an amount of "not less than Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars",^[27] that the shooting schedule amounted to "a period of from three to four months",^[27] and most importantly that "Eisenstein furthermore agrees that all pictures made or directed by him in Mexico, all negative film and positive prints, and all story and ideas embodied in said Mexican picture, will be the property of Mrs. Sinclair..."^[27] A codicil to the contract, dated December 1, allowed that the "Soviet Government may have the [finished] film free for showing inside the U.S.S.R."^[28] Reportedly, it was verbally clarified that the expectation was for a finished film of about an hour's duration.

A funeral procession passes through the maguey.

By December 4, 1930, Eisenstein was en route to Mexico by train, accompanied by Alexandrov and Tisse. Preceding them was Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough, sent along to act as a line producer.

[edit] Production

If Eisenstein's experience in Hollywood had seemed a failure, his journey to Mexico was destined to be an utter fiasco. Mexican authorities had insisted on censorship rights over all footage shot as a condition of admitting the Soviet filmmakers to Mexico. The process devised was to have every reel of negative sent back to Los Angeles for development, a print struck and returned to the Mexican authorities for review and comment, which they were not inclined to do in any hurry.^{[citation needed]} Eisenstein had no story or subject in mind for a film about Mexico, however – even when he left Los Angeles and embarked on a full-scale photographic expedition, filming anything and everything of personal interest without clear idea what he would be doing with it in fulfillment of his contract. He planned, however, to create something without use of a script, to utilize local "types" rather than professional actors for any human role, and to shoot the film silent.

Eisenstein should have, by contract, returned with the finished film by the end of April 1931. Instead, by the 15th of that month, he could only offer up a sketchily written, abstraction-based, somewhat poetic impression of what the finished film might be. It was six months later before he produced a brief synopsis of the six-part film which would come, in one form or another, to be the final plan Eisenstein would settle on for his project. The title for the project, ¡Qué viva México!, was decided on some time later still.

While in Mexico, Eisenstein mixed socially with Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. Eisenstein admired these artists as much as Mexican culture in general; they inspired Eisenstein to call his films "moving frescoes."^[29] However, Eisenstein had gotten wind that the Soviet film industry was pressing Stalin to have Eisenstein declared a deserter, due to his prolonged absence from the Soviet Union, and that Stalin was not resisting that pressure. In fact, Stalin sent a telegram expressing the concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter.^[30]

A stationary image of a pre-Columbian stone carving, spliced between other footage

On February 5, 1932, Sinclair received a telegram from Soyuzkino, to forward to Eisenstein, ordering the latter immediately back to the USSR, leaving Aleksandrov and Tisse to finish the film without him. On the same day, Sinclair learned that Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough—who had been sent along to act as a line producer—for the film's problems.^[31] Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclair shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to return to the U.S. with the remaining film footage and the three Soviets to see what they could do with the film already shot, estimates ranging from 170,000 lineal feet with "Soldadera" unfilmed,^[32] to an excess of 250,000 lineal feet.^[33] For the unfinished filming of the "novel" of Soldadera, without incurring any cost, Eisenstein had secured 500 soldiers, 10,000 guns, and 50 cannons from the Mexican Army,^[34] but this was lost due to Sinclair's cancelling of production.

[edit] Afterwards

To cap things off, when Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed sketches and drawings of Jesus caricatures amongst other material of a lewd pornographic nature.^[35][36] Kimbrough was barely able to prevent their arrest and confiscation of the entire cargo. Simultaneously, it was determined that Eisenstein's re-entry visa had expired,^[37] and Sinclair's contacts in Washington, D.C. were unable to secure him an additional extension. Eisenstein, Alexandrov and Tisse were, after a month's stay at the U.S.-Mexico border outside Laredo, Texas, allowed a 30-day "pass" to get from Texas to New York,^[37] and thence depart for Moscow, while Kimbrough returned to Los Angeles with the remaining film.

Eisenstein planned to edit the film in Moscow, and Sinclair was inclined to allow this. However, Eisenstein took the entire 30 days to tour the American South, and repeated his blaming of Kimbrough to the Soviet film people in New York. Additionally, once Eisenstein had left the US, the Soviets agreed to allow him to cut the film in Moscow but expected the Mexican Film Trust to pay for the duplicate negatives and shipping of the material, then began insisting on the original negative being sent. Mary Sinclair, on behalf of herself and the other trust members, balked at that juncture. The Trust was virtually broke, and all faith by the investors toward Eisenstein was broken. For the most part, the Trust consisted of friends and relatives of Upton and Mary Sinclair's who had invested in good faith and expecting a results several months prior by which an already edited film may be examined. Eisenstein was officially "off the project"; someone else, in the US, would be found to edit the film.

A carousel shown revolving; the image is decorated with Day of the Dead skulls arranged in near the camera in the foreground.

A ferris wheel shown revolving, decorated with festival skulls

It took another year to find someone to deal with the vast amount of Eisenstein's Mexican footage. Other than two general descriptions of each part of the film, Eisenstein had provided Sinclair with no descriptive material to work from. Indeed, he had never developed the film's structure on paper anywhere beyond this most general of stages. The major studios were not interested in either trying to figure out a continuity for the mass of film or to market a silent picture. Another American-made "photographic expedition" to Mexico had already been shown in New York. Finally, in mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his own distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corp. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative — at the Sinclairs expense — and distribute any resulting product. Two short feature films and a short subject — Thunder Over Mexico based on the "Maguey" footage,^[38] Eisenstein in Mexico, and Death Day respectively — were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934. Sinclair's refusal to let Eisenstein work on the films made at least the first title an object of ire and scorn among American Communists and other Eisenstein supporters, and came out with some attendant publicity in the form of public controversy and protest. However, none of the films did very well, failing to return the original investment.

Eisenstein never saw any of the Sinclair-Lesser films, nor a later effort by his first biographer, Marie Seton, called Time In The Sun.^[39] He publicly maintained that he had lost all interest in the project. Eisenstein's foray into the West made the now-staunchly Stalinist film industry look upon him with a more suspicious eye, and this suspicion would never be completely erased in the mind of the Stalinist elite. He apparently spent some time in a Soviet mental hospital in Kislovodsk in July 1933,^[40] ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage which was turned over by Sinclair to Hollywood editors, who irreparably altered the negatives.^[41] He was subsequently assigned a teaching position with the film school GIK (now Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography) where he had taught earlier, and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing curriculum.^[42] Eisenstein married filmmaker and writer Pera Atasheva (1900–1965) in 1934^[43] and remained so until his death in 1948. In 1935, he began another project, Bezhin Meadow, but it appears the film was afflicted with many of the same problems as Que Viva Mexico — Eisenstein unilaterally decided to film two versions of the scenario, one for adult viewers and one for children; failed to define a clear shooting schedule; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. Even though Soviet film executive Boris Shumyatsky encouraged Sinclair in undermining Eisenstein^[44] it was derailed not as much as Bezhin Meadow by the Soviet film industry, but by its American backers.^[45]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Bergan, Ronald (1997), Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict, London: Little, Brown, ISBN 0-316-87708-5 .
• Bordwell, David (1993), The Cinema of Eisenstein, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0674131385 .
• Eisenstein, Sergei (1972), Que Viva Mexico!, New York: Arno, ISBN 978-0405039164 .
• Geduld, Harry M. & Gottesman, Ronald, eds. (1970), Sergei Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair: The Making & Unmaking of Que Viva Mexico!, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0253180506 .
• Karetnikova, Inga (1991), Mexico According to Eisenstein, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 0-8263-1257-8 . In collaboration with Leon Steinmetz.
• Leyda, Jay (1960), Kino: A History Of The Russian And Soviet Film, New York: Macmillan, OCLC 1683826 .
• Leyda, Jay & Voynow, Zina (1982), Eisenstein At Work, New York: Pantheon, ISBN 978-0394748122 .
• Seton, Marie (1952), Sergei M. Eisenstein: A Biography, New York: A.A. Wyn, OCLC 2935257 .

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