Word: zapata
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Viva Zapafa! (20th Century-Fox) is a delayed cinematic footnote to MGM's slambang Viva Villa (1934), in which Wallace Beery sweatily portrayed Mexico's bandit patriot. Villa's revolutionary ally to the south in the bloody 1911-19 uprisings was fiery Emiliano Zapata, nicknamed "the Tiger...
...Viva Zapata! makes the Tiger out to be a pretty tame cat. According to history, Zapata was not only a great folk hero and agrarian emancipator, but also a cruel, cunning Guerrero Indian whose notorious Death Legion made human torches of the enemy and staked living men to anthills...
...picture shows Zapata (Marlon Brando) as a somewhat crude but noble fellow with a nice regard for the social amenities. He is also characterized as a thinker and talker, as well as a brawler. According to the movie, he is a sort of middle-of-the-road democrat who repudiates both dictators and rabid revolutionists. When the real-life Zapata wasn't busy killing his enemies, he found time to go through bogus marriage ceremonies with 26 women, only one of whom he wed legally. The film Tiger is permitted only one beauteous señorita (Jean Peters...
When John Steinbeck's screenplay is not dishing up primer politics and flabby moralizing (the unlettered bandit is made to mouth such sentiments as: "I don't want to be the conscience of the world"), Viva Zapata! is good, muscular horse opera. Director Elia Kazan has filled it with vigorous action-horsemen charging, ammunition trains being dynamited and peons fighting. Striking sequence: President Francisco Madero being shot down by the military in the glare of automobile headlights while a siren drowns out his cries...
...revolutionary armies of Zapata marched into Mexico City singing such songs as Valentina. Today's Mexicans still hear Valentina, as well as more modern ballads, as they bounce to work in battered buses over the capital's paved and cobbled streets. Sometimes the music is from the driver's radio. More often it is strummed by a wandering guitar player who has hopped aboard to travel free. As he plays, he croons; passengers sing with him. When he has finished, he passes...