Diffusion It is better to die standing up than to live on your knees!
Emiliano Zapata
In 1952, Oscar-winning filmmaker Elia Kazan appeared before members of a commission investigating anti-American activities by the American Inquisition. A reactionary organization engaged in the identification and extermination of “subversive elements” among the American intelligentsia, in fact, by purges less harsh than Stalin’s, but no less disgusting and shameful. At the stakes of this witch hunt burned the good names of Charlie Chaplin and Zero Mostel, Arthur Miller and Bertolt Brecht, Paul Robson and Albert Einstein, and many others. Many of them suffered without any reason, Kazan really had something to hide. He was always sympathetic to the left and was a member of the Communist Party. However, unlike many others, Kazan laid out everything before the commission - and even, they say, more than he was asked. Without a shadow of a doubt, he surrendered his former party comrades, who together with him once dreamed of a bright and fair future for all, as well as just random and for some reason did not please the commission of people. It is difficult to say what guided Kazan - fear for the future or banal calculation - in the end, most of the "unreliable" seriously suffered career, but from this shameful stain Kazan could not wash off for the rest of his life. Despite the truly delightful films, a huge contribution to world cinema and a heap of awards, American cultural figures still cringe at the mention of the name Kazan, considering him a traitor.
The most interesting thing is that while Kazan was knocking on friends, denouncing and betraying, perhaps the most "proletarian", idealistic and "pro-communist" of his film - "Viva Zapata!", a film whose convictions he personally betrayed.
But let's leave the political moment, let's go back to art. This film could do honor to the propaganda Soviet film industry. On the same epically sublime note, “Alexander Nevsky” and “The Great Citizen”, “Schors” and “Chapaev” were shot. I would venture to assume that Kazan, who was part of the circles of “progressive American artists” as they were then expressed in the USSR, thoroughly studied the masterpieces of Soviet cinema and made the film ideologically true, popular, ideological, completely different from the typical American film production of his time, because in its center is a revolutionary, mythologized hero, and the theme is popular revolt, class struggle and the people’s search for justice.
The language of this film is permeated with poetic imagery and excited pathetics. He skillfully and talentedly combines legend with history, epic with lyrics, pathos with the truth of characters, metaphors with realism. The white horse, a symbol of the purity of the thoughts of the revolution and dreams of a bright future, looks beautifully and symbolically from the mountain at the undefeated Mexico, which Zapata taught to fight. The clique of generals who have encroached on the revolution is doomed - even seeing the body of their leader sewn by bullets, people do not believe in his death, because it is impossible to kill an immortal idea.
However, unlike the same Eisenstein, the mass of the people in the film Kazan is very inert and wakes up only closer to the final, Kazan, being still an American (albeit an emigrant), believed in the person, in Napoleon and Lincoln, leaving the people behind brackets. But Zapata in the film says important words for today’s Russian reality: “strong people do not need a strong ruler, he needs weak people” and “If there is no justice for the people, then there should be no peace for the government.” So it must be said that the film, made 65 years ago about the events that took place more than 100 years ago, is surprisingly relevant!
Unfriendly, underhanded, wolf looking around Zapata. A powerful man, raised by the peasants almost to the rank of a saint, a liberator and a hero who accepted a martyr’s death, appears in the performance of Brando somewhat “slow down” from the volume of information and power that fell on him by a simple peasant – rude, heavy on the rise, illiterate, seeking not power, but above all – sincerely thirsty for justice. He did not at all want to be the “conscience of the whole world”, he, unlike the fighters for Soviet power, happened to be accidentally in the millstone of the revolution, simply because “if not him, then who?” and because it was no longer possible to tolerate.
He is painfully ashamed of his own illiteracy, succumbs to the burden of grandiose responsibility and renounces power, preferring to remain not the state, but the people's elect. The film shows him at war and at home, in communication with friends and enemies, Brando perfectly conveys the awkwardness and “inappropriateness” of this man “from the soha” in the spacious presidential halls, his inability to communicate with people both “his” and “aliens”, the rude tenderness with which he loves his wife, and how he keeps her at a distance, realizing that he can give her nothing but pain and fear. But there is also a kind of male charm in him, some kind of “bearish” clumsiness that gives him the canonical way of life, touching peasant prudence. Brando plays great. For example, in a scene where he learns of a friend’s betrayal, he decides for a long, long time to execute him, one can see how a man struggles with the revolution, state necessity with the simple peasant. Or how heartbreakingly hard he leaves for certain death from his beloved wife, unable even to say goodbye. Or how painfully he listens to the rebuke of his elder brother, who exchanged the ideals of the revolution for a well-fed “general” life.
The older brother, by the way, perfectly played Anthony Quinn, deservedly received an Oscar for the role. There isn’t much of him here, but unlike the swelled frowny Brando, Kazan plays easily and cheerfully, though not without tear. His hero is a cheerful and bully, he could not overcome philistineism, betrayed the idea for comfort, he just wanted to live well. To call him a traitor does not turn the tongue, so Quinn is convincing when he says that he takes only what he has the right to, as a representative of a new power and force.
It is interesting that, unlike Hermler’s “Great Citizen” and some other paintings of the totalitarian era, with the loss of ideological orientation began to give falsehood, “Viva Zapata!” remains absolutely sincere, since it takes purely poetic, sublime, crystal clear images from the barracks and party obligations from communist ideology. And now it sounds as sublime and honest, having lost all its “leftist essence”, as “Spartak” or “Chapaev” – as a beautiful legend about an amazing man, leader, fighter for justice, who fell in the fight for human happiness beloved son of his people. The diffusion of Hollywood and communist ideology was extremely successful, emotional and spectacular.
Elia Kazan, surprisingly repeating one of the unpleasant heroes-traitors in his film, continued to make great films. He never explained why he was so willing to make a deal with the government and conscience. I hope there were good reasons for this, because watching the film “Viva Zapata!”, not a second do not doubt that it was shot by a person who sincerely believes in ideals.
9 out of 10