kingrat wrote:Marlon Brando did not always sound believable as a Mexican, and with his mustache he reminded me at times of Burt Reynolds.
Oh, great. I'm not the only person who kept expecting that mustache to fall off, am I? When I was a kid I confused Burt and Marlon all the time. I think Burt liked it that way. Did anyone else find the number of Noo Yawk accents among the peons amusing?
kingrat wrote:Does anyone else see the Joseph Wiseman character as a cold, soulless Communist, someone who cares only for abstract ideals and not human beings? The portrayal of the political situation seemed shrewd, with some universal situations: the weak leader (Madero), the rich who turn the revolution to their own purposes, the revolutionary leaders who are willing to enrich themselves and the ones who aren't
I thought that the political observations in this movie were quite astute--and were an indictment of ideologies in general. It seemed to me that it accurately portrayed the rage at injustice that fuels a revolution as well as the political calculations that can direct it, as
Wiseman's chilling presence did. It was interesting that Zapata was portrayed as a man who could inspire love in his compatriots--but did he have any practical ideas of his own? That boy that Emilio saw in the stable stealing feed from the horses because he was starving was probably still hungry after the revolution had been won.
kingrat wrote:I do like the 1950s Brando performances where he actually interacts with other actors. In the Burn! and Godfather era, he mostly doesn't.
Too bad Marlon never did a one man show. I thought he was terrific in the scene in church with
Jean Peters and when he confronted his brother (
Anthony Quinn) for his corruption. I really don't see why Quinn got the Oscar for his role, but maybe I'm missing something. Was it that startling to Academy voters to see an actor shouting and being a slob in a mainstream movie?
kingrat wrote:Jean Peters had some real range as an actress. Too bad she didn't have a bigger career.
Damn that Howard Hughes. She
can be really arresting --and not just because she was gorgeous and brought real warmth to everything from
Captain from Castile on. I just saw her recently in the remake of
I Wake Up Screaming, called
Vicki (1953), with
Richard Boone in the
Laird Cregar part. The girl was terrific, playing her ambitious character as sympathetic and repulsive at the same time. I actually thought she was a much better drawn character than the sketch filled out by
Carole Landis in the original. Can't say that Mr. Boone was much better than Cregar as the cop, though he was more obviously cracked.
kingrat wrote:...thought that visually this was one of Kazan's stronger films
I think it was because these two words were in the credits: Joseph MacDonald
After making
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), which
Kazan believed was too constrained and claustrophobic, ( though that may have helped to tell the story of these somewhat stunted lives hemmed in by the city), and the static
Sea of Grass (1946), which should have been a movie with enormous vistas, he began to study the films of
John Ford to see what he was missing visually in his storytelling. After seeing what could be achieved in
My Darling Clementine (1946), Kazan "inherited" MacDonald when Ford left the production of
Pinky. Always a man who learned quickly, Kazan absorbed all he could learn from him and other great DPs. When he worked with this particular master cinematographer named Joe MacDonald on
Panic in the Streets (1950) and
Viva Zapata (1952), there is a fluid immediacy in his movies
Of course, being
Kazan, one of the perennially insecure but talented masters of the universe, when it came time to write his 860 page autobiography,
Elia Kazan: A Life, there was no room for a brief mention of the cinematographer by the filmmaker. He made those movies all alone, right?
