Que Viva Mexico! (Да здравствует Мексика!)

Sovexportfilm presents

''A Mosfilm Production''

SERGUEl ElSENSTElN

EDWARD TlSSE

GRlGORY ALEXANDROV

QUE VlVA MEXlCO!

Mexico, 1931

Sergei Eisenstein, the film director.

His assitants: Edward Tisse, cameraman...

and me, Grigory Alexandrov, director.

How did we land in this amazing country?

Sergei Eisenstein's films of the 20's...

especially ''The Battleship Potemkin,'' won him renown.

He, and we along with him...

were invited to Hollywood to make a film.

But Eisenstein didn't see eye to eye...

with the Hollywood tycoons.

Helped by Upton Sinclair, the American writer...

we decided to shoot a film about Mexico.

But first there was much we had to learn...

about that country.

The great Mexican painters, Diego Rivera...

David Siqueiros...

and Jose Orozco...

were our guides and teachers.

We spent two months filming.

We travelled north to south, east to west...

driving thousands of miles along rugged roads.

A feature of this land...

struck us as amazing.

A hundred miles meant the difference between epochs...

separating the pre-Columbian Mexico...

from that of the time of the Spanish conquest...

the Mexico of the feudal rule...

from modern Mexico.

Eisenstein felt that this unusual country...

deserved an unusual film and that Mexico's tragic story...

could be told without actors or sets.

A script was written...

and we began making Que Viva Mexico!

Our filming crew...

consisted of only us three.

But we were young.

We were ready to move mountains.

Even so, we did not manage to complete shooting

or editing the film.

All our reels of film were held up

in Hollywood, where they had been developed and printed.

Later they landed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

They were turned over to us

only a short time ago...

after nearly half a century of negociations.

Eisenstein and Tisse

are no longer with us...

but what they did belongs to the living.

You will see the film...

as Eisenstein conceived it...

and as we planned it.

We do not know what the great director...

would have done with the picture today.

But using his script and drawings,

we have tried...

to get as close as possible to what he had in mind.

The film was to consist of several parts...

some close to being documentary and some acted.

On the whole, it was intended to be...

a colourful film symphony of Mexico.

QUE VlVA MEXlCO!

''Prologue''

The time in the prologue...

is eternity.

lt could all be taking place today...

or have happened 20 years ago...

or even a thousand years ago.

''The text is by Eisenstein. lt is read by S. Bondarchuk.''

Stone.

Gods.

People.

A land of sacred ruins and huge pyramids.

Men and women with the features

of their ancestors.

The pagan temples of holy cities.

A kingdom of death...

where the past dominates the present.

And faces like those hewn in stone-

like those...

of the Mexicans of old.

Symbolic reminder of the past:

a funeral

amidst dead ruins.

ln total bondage...

to the idea of death, of man's physical end.

Tropical Tehuantepec.

Here time flows slowly...

to the accomplishment of the rustle of the palm fronds.

The way of life remains unchanged for centuries.

At its dawn, the world must have been full...

of the same regal indolence.

''The Sandunga''

Girls sing the sandunga as they daydream of the future.

Full of pride in her youthful beauty.

Concepcion.

Her most cherished dream - a gold necklace.

A dream shared by every girl in Tehuantepec.

The necklace is her dowry, her key to marital bliss.

The woman works, she chooses a husband for herself...

and she brings him into their new house.

Matriarchate. Rule by the women.

Here the girls go to work early and save every copper...

to acquire a necklace of gold coins...

by the time they are 16 or 18.

Concepcion needs one more gold coin - just one -

for her dream to be realized.

May your necklace bring you happiness!

Abundio, the object of Concepcion's affection.

lsn't this what you wanted,

Concepcion?

What you dreamed of for so long?

The matter passes into the hands... of the mothers and matchmakers.

They inspect the dowry.

How many coins in the necklace?

Are they pure gold?

The whole population of Tehuantepec...

takes part in the event.

A slow, semi-vegetative existence.

A way of life...

that has not changed over the centuries.

As the years go by, new flowers blossom.

''Fiesta''

The action of this story is set...

during the Feast of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe.

But this is also an annual reminder...

of Spain's conversion of Mexico...

into a colony of bloodshed and suffering.

ln the 16th century.

Cortes conquered Mexico

The monks who came with him

wiped out pagan cults...

with fire and sword.

On pyramids once crowned