Review of ¡Qué Viva México! (1979) by Martin T — 31 Aug 2010

I feel guilty criticizing an unfinished film, but it's all I have to work with. Eisenstein's photography is top-notch, of course. Plenty of iconic images to behold here. The prologue and the epilogue are both very fine as well; the former kind of an ethnographic pastiche of all things Mexican, and the latter an exciting look at the "Day of the Dead" celebration (always a fascinating subject).

But the main parts of the film aren't that hot. It's split into two stories. The first is about a matador and includes a bullfighting sequence. It's not bad, but it eventually wears out its welcome.

Not nearly as much as the other story, however, about a loving couple and their cruel landlord. It's a revenge tale that captures the rebellious spirit that Eisenstein would have expanded upon had he been able to finish the project, but it goes on waaaaaaaaay too long and rarely succeeded in holding my interest.

The storytelling technique is like that of a silent film, with just a bare minimum of voiceover serving as the intertitles. I'm not sure whether or not Eisenstein would have wanted it that way. Still, like Welles' Don Quixote, it's better to have a flawed look at what might have been rather than nothing at all.