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Rejecting Power: Viva Zapata! (1952)
Review Copyright Roger Zotti, 2003
A group of Mexican peasants are asking their president, Porfirio Diaz, for their land rights. Diaz paternalistically assures them not too worry. (He refers to them as his children.)
Only one of them is courageous enough to confront Diaz.
Mildly annoyed, Diaz asks, "What is your name, my son?"
"Zapata. Emiliano Zapata," is the reply. Immediately we sense the young man's leadership potential.
Thus opens Eliza Kazan's Viva Zapata!.
Off the set, Marlon Brando, who plays Zapata, and Anthony Quinn, cast as his bother Eufemio, didn't get along. Patricia Bosworth says that Quinn was irritated with both Kazan and Brando and quotes him as saying, "'...Kazan seemed to be paying more attention to Brando, giving him all the close-ups, coddling him. Are you okay? Did you sleep well?"
Brando had a different view. He said he admired Quinn professionally and liked him personally. "[B]ut he was extremely cold to me while we shot the picture. During our scenes together I sensed a bitterness toward me...", he said in his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me. "Only years later did I learn why."
Kazan was to blame for the ill feelings between the actors. He'd provoke them. He'd take Brando aside and tell him Quinn was saying he (Quinn) was the better actor. Then he'd corner Quinn and tell him that Brando was bragging about being the more talented actor. By the time the fight scene between them took place, they were enraged at each other. "Quinn was much bigger than Brando," writes Peter Manso, "but Marlon nevertheless went amok, nearly losing control."
Manso quotes Quinn: "Every actor is competitive, but he pulled my hair, and I could have driven the...sword right through him. He didn't have to go that far. All he had to do was indicate it..."
Kazan never told either actor he had manipulated them. "He loved to create off camera dramas that would mimic and enhance what he wanted to see on camera," Bosworth wrote.
Brando and Quinn didn't speak for fifteen years. One night, Brando watched Quinn on a TV talk show discuss the tension on the set of Viva Zapata!. Brando, realizing what Kazan had done, telephoned Quinn. "It was a relief to clear up the incident," Brando told Bosworth. "From then on, Tony and I started speaking. Gadg inspired a lot of actors, but you paid a price."
Viva Zapata! is the story of a Mexican leader in conflict with himself. He likes being a leader and relishes the power that comes with it But he also considers himself a peasant.
There's a scene late in the film that mimics the opening one: Zapata is visited by some peasants. Just as he had boldly confronted Diaz early on, Zapata is now challenged by one of them (Henry da Silva). Zapata realizes that power has corrupted him and joins the peasants.
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