|
The quandary is to exalt a rebellious figure during a reactionary time, thus Elia Kazan gazing back at Eisenstein right before his House Un-American Activities Committee testimony. "Strong men without faults, there aren't any!" Emiliano Zapata (Marlon Brando) the fiery young bull, all too aware that noble ideals can't cut through the barbed wire of stolen land, persistent enough to become a circled name on the president's list. (Curious Indio makeup accompanies his sombrero halo and belt of bullets, with taped eyelids in anticipation of The Teahouse of the August Moon.) From campesino uprising to palatial disillusionment and betrayal, the Revolution charted and streamlined by John Steinbeck. Courtship of the maiden (Jean Peters) with proverb on top of proverb, a honeymoon not properly consummated until she teaches the illiterate firebrand a bit of the Bible. "The conscience of the world" is worn more easily by some than others, Eufemio (Anthony Quinn) spirals into dissolution and runs into a cuckold's rifle, Judas is the opportunistic journalist (Joseph Wiseman) surveying it all. Fernandez's work is visible throughout, Río Escondido in particular. Pancho Villa (Alan Reed) like a burly feline lolling at siesta time, Madero (Harold Gordon) "the mouse in a black suit" trembling while General Huerta (Frank Silvera) picks his teeth. The inclination toward abstraction ("Gentlemen, this is not a man we're discussing, it's an idea") is transcended by Kazan's visceral detailing—from a trail of gunpowder bursting into flame to the galvanic twitch of a body after a fusillade. White horse in the mountains for the myth of revolt, running water in the plaza for its continuum. "You draw a strong moral." Studies by Penn (The Left Handed Gun) and Kubrick (Spartacus) prepare Pontecorvo's comprehensive analysis in Queimada, Brando and all. With Arnold Moss, Margo, Lou Gilbert, Florenz Ames, Fay Roope, and Mildred Dunnock. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |