Copyright 21 April 1934 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. New York opening at the Criterion, 10 April 1934. London opening at the Empire, 3 May 1934. U.K release: 29 September 1934. 12 reels. 10,284 feet. 114 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Pancho Villa from boyhood to death.
NOTES: Academy Award, Assistant Director, John Waters only (defeating Scott Beal for Imitation of Life and Cullen Tate for Cleopatra). Also nominated for Best Picture (It Happened One Night), Writing Adaptation (It Happened One Night), Sound Recording (One Night of Love). Wallace Beery, Best Actor, Venice Film Festival Award. 7th in the Film Daily annual poll of U.S. film critics. Photographed on location in Mexico. About half the movie was originally directed by Howard Hawks. Shooting commenced 10 October 1933. Lee Tracy had the role of Johnny Sykes but was fired from the project when he was arrested by the Mexican police on 19 November 1933 for urinating from his hotel balcony on to a parade of Mexican soldiers. Hawks was fired in late November when he refused to testify against Tracy. It is alleged that a great deal of Hawks footage was destroyed in a plane crash. Hawks himself claimed that most of the location material is his, except for all the exterior battle sequences which were directed by Richard and Arthur Rosson (and photographed by Charles G. Clarke). Conway kept Wong Howe on as photographer when he took over.
Shooting was completed on 12 January 1934. Negative cost: $1,022,000. Initial domestic rental gross: $1,109,000. According to Ronald Haver in his splendidly produced and researched David O. Selznick's Hollywood (Knopf, New York, 1980), there is little Hawks' material in the final movie. "Conway began filming from scratch and a 2nd unit in Mexico under the direction of Richard Rosson continued working all through the winter right into March 1934." The leading lady in the Hawks version was Mona Maris. She was replaced by Fay Wray.
COMMENT: "Fiction woven from truth," so a Foreword tells us. But this sprawling, not uninteresting account of the rise and fall of Pancho Villa could be described as the reverse of that laudable aim. It is truth woven from a fiction that simplifies, romanticizes, augments and so far distorts basic facts that only their conclusions can be recognized as truths.
Difficult as it is to separate fact from fiction in Viva Villa, it's even harder to quantify its value as entertainment. The picture seems to be a composite made up of elements that tend to undermine dramatic unity. We are never sure whether we should regard Villa as bandit or patriot, monster or saint, butcher or clown; whether we should like him, hate him, admire or loathe him. The script takes a long time to make up its mind, but just as it finally settles on "loathe", it suddenly switches sides again and fades out on "admire".
These peregrinations don't worry Beery a jot. He plays the character on the same wheedling but brutish level throughout, except in his scenes with Madero when he adopts a childishly insincere posture of hero worship that actually undermines the script.
But Beery's myopic performance is just one of many factors that work against the film's success. The chief and most persistent flaw comes down to the dreadful miscasting of second-rate substitute, Stuart Erwin, who tries without the slightest hope in the world to fill the abrasively caustic shoes of Lee Tracy. Erwin turns the reporter into a charmless, cowardly milksop of a whinger. Tracy played the same lines as a compellingly obnoxious scoop-at-any-price newshound right from the start. When the script requires Erwin to be really nasty, he comes a real cropper. We long for a stray bullet to gun him down. But, no! He's still hanging in there, snowing away, right to the bitter end.
I didn't take to Leo Carillo's far-too-casual study of the hideously sadistic Diego either, but at least he did suppress most of his usual irritatingly over-the-top mannerisms. Donald Cook, not unexpectedly, erred in the opposite direction, by effortlessly contriving to drain his characterization of any color and make his portrait stiff as a board.
Fortunately, there were four main players who really impressed. Fay Wray provided a persuasive account of an aristocratic beauty whose emotions ran hot, then cold. Joseph Schildkraut definitely made his presence felt as the ruthless General Pascal. Henry B. Walthall shone in all his scenes except the last (where it was obvious by the sudden change in lighting that a different photographer and director were at work). And Katherine De Mille (doubtless copying her dad, Cecil B.) certainly looked and acted the part of the imperious Rosa.
While I didn't appreciate the film's sudden changes of mood or its jerky continuity (made even more conspicuous by the indiscriminate use of inter-titles), I particularly hated the frequent attempts at comedy relief, all of which fell jarringly flat.
On the whole, the studio scenes were less impressive than the location-shot material. Many of the Mexican vistas of crowds and horsemen were shot with artistry and flair. They were truly staggering. Only occasionally were these exterior shots matched by an equal eye for drama in the studio-shot sequences. (One that springs to mind is an effectively long tracking shot that follows Madero as he leaves a crowded ballroom for the solitude of his office).
The present patchwork quilt of a movie leaves me in no doubt that if its original conception had been followed, Viva Villa would have emerged as a creditable achievement. As it is, whilst not fatally flawed, it certainly ranks as a disappointment.
SYNOPSIS: Pancho Villa from boyhood to death.
NOTES: Academy Award, Assistant Director, John Waters only (defeating Scott Beal for Imitation of Life and Cullen Tate for Cleopatra). Also nominated for Best Picture (It Happened One Night), Writing Adaptation (It Happened One Night), Sound Recording (One Night of Love). Wallace Beery, Best Actor, Venice Film Festival Award. 7th in the Film Daily annual poll of U.S. film critics. Photographed on location in Mexico. About half the movie was originally directed by Howard Hawks. Shooting commenced 10 October 1933. Lee Tracy had the role of Johnny Sykes but was fired from the project when he was arrested by the Mexican police on 19 November 1933 for urinating from his hotel balcony on to a parade of Mexican soldiers. Hawks was fired in late November when he refused to testify against Tracy. It is alleged that a great deal of Hawks footage was destroyed in a plane crash. Hawks himself claimed that most of the location material is his, except for all the exterior battle sequences which were directed by Richard and Arthur Rosson (and photographed by Charles G. Clarke). Conway kept Wong Howe on as photographer when he took over.
Shooting was completed on 12 January 1934. Negative cost: $1,022,000. Initial domestic rental gross: $1,109,000. According to Ronald Haver in his splendidly produced and researched David O. Selznick's Hollywood (Knopf, New York, 1980), there is little Hawks' material in the final movie. "Conway began filming from scratch and a 2nd unit in Mexico under the direction of Richard Rosson continued working all through the winter right into March 1934." The leading lady in the Hawks version was Mona Maris. She was replaced by Fay Wray.
COMMENT: "Fiction woven from truth," so a Foreword tells us. But this sprawling, not uninteresting account of the rise and fall of Pancho Villa could be described as the reverse of that laudable aim. It is truth woven from a fiction that simplifies, romanticizes, augments and so far distorts basic facts that only their conclusions can be recognized as truths.
Difficult as it is to separate fact from fiction in Viva Villa, it's even harder to quantify its value as entertainment. The picture seems to be a composite made up of elements that tend to undermine dramatic unity. We are never sure whether we should regard Villa as bandit or patriot, monster or saint, butcher or clown; whether we should like him, hate him, admire or loathe him. The script takes a long time to make up its mind, but just as it finally settles on "loathe", it suddenly switches sides again and fades out on "admire".
These peregrinations don't worry Beery a jot. He plays the character on the same wheedling but brutish level throughout, except in his scenes with Madero when he adopts a childishly insincere posture of hero worship that actually undermines the script.
But Beery's myopic performance is just one of many factors that work against the film's success. The chief and most persistent flaw comes down to the dreadful miscasting of second-rate substitute, Stuart Erwin, who tries without the slightest hope in the world to fill the abrasively caustic shoes of Lee Tracy. Erwin turns the reporter into a charmless, cowardly milksop of a whinger. Tracy played the same lines as a compellingly obnoxious scoop-at-any-price newshound right from the start. When the script requires Erwin to be really nasty, he comes a real cropper. We long for a stray bullet to gun him down. But, no! He's still hanging in there, snowing away, right to the bitter end.
I didn't take to Leo Carillo's far-too-casual study of the hideously sadistic Diego either, but at least he did suppress most of his usual irritatingly over-the-top mannerisms. Donald Cook, not unexpectedly, erred in the opposite direction, by effortlessly contriving to drain his characterization of any color and make his portrait stiff as a board.
Fortunately, there were four main players who really impressed. Fay Wray provided a persuasive account of an aristocratic beauty whose emotions ran hot, then cold. Joseph Schildkraut definitely made his presence felt as the ruthless General Pascal. Henry B. Walthall shone in all his scenes except the last (where it was obvious by the sudden change in lighting that a different photographer and director were at work). And Katherine De Mille (doubtless copying her dad, Cecil B.) certainly looked and acted the part of the imperious Rosa.
While I didn't appreciate the film's sudden changes of mood or its jerky continuity (made even more conspicuous by the indiscriminate use of inter-titles), I particularly hated the frequent attempts at comedy relief, all of which fell jarringly flat.
On the whole, the studio scenes were less impressive than the location-shot material. Many of the Mexican vistas of crowds and horsemen were shot with artistry and flair. They were truly staggering. Only occasionally were these exterior shots matched by an equal eye for drama in the studio-shot sequences. (One that springs to mind is an effectively long tracking shot that follows Madero as he leaves a crowded ballroom for the solitude of his office).
The present patchwork quilt of a movie leaves me in no doubt that if its original conception had been followed, Viva Villa would have emerged as a creditable achievement. As it is, whilst not fatally flawed, it certainly ranks as a disappointment.