Viva Villa Digital Life VHS

Viva Villa
starring: Wallace Beery, Fay Wray, Leo Carrillo, Donald Cook, Stuart Erwin
directed by: Howard Hawks, Jack Conway, William A. Wellman

Used Price: $29.95

Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302717723
Format: Black & White, NTSC
ISBN: 6302717728
Label: MGM (Warner)
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Release Date: September 01, 1998
Running Time: 115 minutes
Sales Rank: 4802
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Theatrical Release Date: April 27, 1934

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Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Complete Print Exists
Articles refer to the scene where Fay Wray's character is whipped while she laughs and claim that it was edited because of the newly enforced Production Code in July 1934. This is not accurate. In the 1960s, on either New York channel WNEW 5 or WCBS 2, that scene was shown regularly whenever "Viva Villa" was aired. There was also an additional scene showing Leo Carillo's character lining up 3 federal troops at a time, front to back, and shooting them with one bullet to save ammunition. Both scenes are edited out from the Turner Classics print, but they do exist and thus allow for the possibility of the film eventually being restored.

Rating:

- +1/2. Progressive, given the era it was made in
Wallace Beery stars in this surprisingly raw, graphically violent (and yet, somehow somewhat sentimentalized) Hollywood version of the life of Pancho Villa, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution. Character actor Leo Carillo, infamous as a latino Uncle Tom for his portrayal as Pancho in the "Ceesco Keed" series, here costars as Sierra, Villa's blandly sadistic lieutenant, and Faye Wray appears as an aristocratic lady who catches Villa's fancy. Ben Hecht's sharp, no-nonsense script is politically left-leaning, and while it takes liberties with its depictation of Villa as a brutish lout with a heart of gold, Beery's performance sheds unexpected nuance... Basically, he's transposing his loveable-mug boxer persona onto the Mexican landscape, but in a weird way, it almost works. Apparently this film had a stop-and-start shooting history, with three directors (Howard Hawks and William Wellman worked on it, but ... Read More

Rating:

- Hollywoody Radicalism During The New Deal
The other reviewers are certainly correct in lambasting "Viva Villa!" as unhistorical and even, by contemporary sensibilities, offensive in certain characterizations. But what is moving, and even inspiring, is the film's recognition of the injustice of a society in which the poor and wretched are treated contemptibly, as if they were little more than animals. Villa's ferocity (as portrayed by the incomparable Beery, a hard and difficult man in a role made for him), the cold cruelty of Leo Carrillo's character, and the general mayhem of the Mexican Revolution are perhaps Hollywood's sly way of saying that 1930s Depression America also had deep injustices that needed addressing -- or who knows what could happen here! As usual, the "message" is leavened with lots of action and some broad comedy, but Beery's Villa -- even when presented as the "comic Mexican" -- evinces a sinister seriousness, as if to say, "I may talk ... Read More

Rating:

- Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa.
The historical accuracy of this lavish film is nil except that it does depict the sheer wholesale violence of the Mexican Revolution, in which whole villages disappeared off the maps forever. It also was filmed closely enough in time to the events depicted that the costumes are quite accurate, and I think that I read that some actual footage from the era was mixed into the movie, but I'm not positive of that. This film stands out as the best and most worthwhile Pancho Villa effort so far simply because of the obvious but incomparable casting of Wallace Beery as Villa. Beery effortlessly brings the macho leadership quality that Raoul Walsh wrote about in his references to Villa in his autobiography, "Each Man In His Time," and has received no competition from any of the later fine actors that have attempted the part. Beery brings a sense of outrageous flamboyance and sheer fun to everything he does on screen, ... Read More

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