Viva Zapata! **** (1952, Marlon Brando, Jean Peters, Anthony Quinn) – Classic Movie Review 2382

Buried under a big moustache and a big hat, Marlon Brando may be very oddly, indeed uncomfortably, cast as the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in director Elia Kazan’s 1952 historical drama biopic. But nevertheless Brando certainly manages to rivet the attention with his low-key brooding performance and won the 1953 Bafta film award as Best Foreign Actor. 

However, it was Anthony Quinn who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in a much showier performance as Emiliano’s explosive brother Eufemio, the film’s only Academy Award after five nominations.

Kazan directs with painstaking care, but it’s all a bit creaky and stagey, with too much filming on the 20th Century Fox Studio sound stage, though there is exterior filing in Colorada, Texas, Mexico and New Mexico. Meanwhile the novelist John Steinbeck provides the careful if not inspired screenplay about the outlaw who rises from the ranks of the peasantry to lead the revolution against the corrupt, oppressive dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz (Fay Roope).

The respectful movie is not exactly a rousing experience, but it is always intelligent, informative and entertaining – and it is certainly worth while for Brando and Quinn at somewhere near their stirring best. Jean Peters is a bit lost as Josefa Zapata. Joseph Wiseman plays Fernando Aguirre, Alan Reed is Pancho Villa and Harold Gordon is Francisco Indalecio Madero.

Tyrone Power was the Fox studio’s original choice to play Emiliano Zapata. True Mexican Quinn was very disappointed when Brando was cast. He thought that, with his Latin appearance, he should have been the choice

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2382

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