Viva Zapata! *****

When I was a boy and my parents went out for the evening, I had the opportunity to stay up late and watch a movie. If I was lucky it was an old horror movie, or better something like “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein and Dracula.” If I was really lucky I could catch “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Truly miraculous, however, was to catch a movie I can’t find anywhere, “Viva Zapata.”

It is Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn in an Elia Kazan directed, Steinbeck written saga of the early 20th century revolutionary of Southern Mexico. Every time it reduced me to tears. Quinn got the Oscar for his overacting and Brando just the nomination for one of his best performances.

1952 is the McCarthy era and the real Zapata was a student of Kropotkin. This film walks a beautiful line between right and left. Steinbeck’s Zapata not only believes he should fight for the rights of peasants, he believes that power corrupts and that the peasants will never really succeed until they distrust all leaders and fight for themselves.

There are many fine moments in this film: Emiliano explaining indirectly why the peasants need to kill his brother if they are going to be free; the young firebrand Emiliano explaining that children will starve if planting is delayed by political games, only to hear as Presidente (an hour later in the film) that children will starve if planting is delayed by political games; or the moment when peasants by sheer numbers stop the police from arresting their champion Zapata, by amassing in such numbers that the federales simply cannot move along.

Steinbeck gives you Mexican peasant culture; it is a gift you can treasure forever.