1929: Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse headed West in search for contracts. A short documentary (unfinished) for a German client, then in France their first sound movie (Romance Sentimentale). Nevertheless the target was Hollywood, where Eisenstein would not succeed to find a contract (neither would Leni Riefenstahl, a couple of years later).After one year, in 1930, Upton Sinclair sponsored the Soviet team for a movie about Mexico. The movie couldn't be finished: lack of more money, lack of more time. The guys went back to Moscow and the filmed material remained at Upton Sinclair.There are several contradictory versions about what happened and why it happened; anyway, the footage arrived eventually at Moscow, in the seventies. Eisenstein and Tisse were dead by that time. Only Aleksandrov was alive. He restored the material and asked Sergei Bondarchuk to be the narrator: the result was да здравствует Мексика! (¡Que viva México!).The movie has six episodes: a prologue (Tisse moving slowly the camera over pyramids, Aztec sculptures, motionless people along carved deities, a country that's extremely diverse, where all ages of history coexist, timelessly and motionlessly) - a wedding (in a place where the society is still living in matriarchate) - a religious procession (superb images again: three youngsters carrying the cross, toward three priests like Aztec masks, facing three skulls) - a corrida - a story with three young peasants killed by a landlord and buried alive (Tisse gave here a very shocking image, while one of the most powerful cinematic scenes I have ever seen) - the epilogue (a joyful festival for the All Souls Day, a fabulous celebration of the Dead). A seventh episode was no more shot, Soldaderas, Eisenstein had in mind to focus it on women, the female Revolution soldiers.The restitution made by Aleksandrov seemed to me very honest - he didn't add anything, and, very important, he didn't edit the film - I'm sure Eisenstein would have put the episodes in parallel like in Griffith's Intolerance; Aleksandrov let them sequential, which was fortunate - one needs the genius of Griffith or Eisenstein to not fail. Only a titan has that power to tell four or five stories in the same time, following their rhythm.

This is the greatest documentary fiction I've ever seen, despite this movie was incomplete the beauty of the images is great, with a great culture you can make magic with the camera. The Mexican people have a wonderful big culture and personally I didn't know a little things about my own country.About the part of fiction is great that this reality is happening know and the sense of revolution is present, i think that only a Russian could understand the sense of the work people.The drama and the courage of the indians in the defense of the honor and the repression is a symbol of the revolution that needs the country.

Que Viva Mexico is an interesting (reconstruction of a) film by Sergei Eisenstein, the director of so many masterpieces. In fact, of all that I have seen, this is the only non-masterpiece of the bunch. Even the reconstruction of Beshin Meadow I like more. Que Viva Mexico is a semi-documentary. Most of it is uninteresting and, unlike Eisenstein's other films and Tisse's other cinematography, poorly composed. The only parts of real interest come near the end, with the rebellion, something that Eisenstein was used to creating on screen. There is a great gunfight with a woman participating, a precursor to Alexander Nevsky's Vasilisa, and there is a great scene where some rebels are buried up to the shoulders underground and then trampled by horses (by far the best scene in the film). The Day of the Dead celebration is also very interesting. There is also a bullfight that will demonstrate just how cruel bullfighting is. I do have to complain about the reconstruction that I watched. This was supposed to be a silent film, I believe. The narration I did not mind, for Eisenstein would have had to find a way to communicate what the narrator did anyway. And the music is good, often great. But I object to the insertion of diagetic sound effects, like guns shooting and horses galloping. This is ridiculous. Obviously the only people who are ever going to see this film are Eisenstein enthusiasts, so to try to sell it to the public as a sound movie is ridiculous. Why?

Although its coscenarist and director, Sergei M. Eisenstein did not live to complete "Que Viva Mexico?," the Russian who reconstructed this 1979 version for Mosfilm, Grigori Alexandrov, co-authored the film and worked closely with Eisenstein in 1931 and 1932 in the filming of the footage ultimately fashioned into several pictures, including butchered versions released by Sol Lesser and even some Bell and Howell documentaries! At some point, the man who initially commissioned the movie, Upton Sinclair, donated all or almost all of Eisenstein's footage to the Museum of Modern Art, which made it available as it was shot (take by take by take) in a "study" film. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that an edited version has appeared in video, and for that, Eisenstein fans and lovers of cinema should be jubilant! Even if Alexandrov had cut the footage completely out of order and in a form that would make Sergei Mikhailovich roll over in his grave, we can appreciate the dynamic power of the images, so ingeniously composed and photographed by Eisenstein with his longtime cameraman, Eduard Tisse. Of course, Eisenstein's remarkable scenario could never be realized EXACTLY as he wrote it, but Alexandrov did an admirable job all the same. In whatever form we see it, Eisenstein's footage reminds us that this aborted masterpiece, had he been able to complete the movie, would have been just that -- one of the greatest motion pictures of all time. It is a tragedy for film lovers that Eisenstein could not obtain the negative from the Sinclair cabal (which included the American author's Pasadena, California Standard Oil cronies!) at the time. But this 1979 version is better than nothing, and a lot better than many so-called movies churned out by Hollywood today. The film should be studied by every student of cinema, and especially photographers and editors. In truth, Eisenstein probably was planning as many as six different films, but Sinclair sent his alcoholic brother-in-law to ride herd on the Russians, to the result that the "plug was pulled" on the production short of its completion by Eisenstein. Frankly, had the latter managed to complete the movie and edit it himself, I am convinced film buffs would put it right up there with "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca" (i.e. among the greatest masterpieces of cinema). I recommend the film highly, if only as a reminder of what might have been!