Conceived as a gigantic tableau of Mexican life, the film is a startling portrayal of the dramatic interaction between the ancient Mayan civilisation and the Spanish conquistadores and the modernising mythology of the Mexican Revolution.
¡Que viva México!, as Eisenstein had planned it, was to consist of six interdependent episodes. Their relationship was not strictly a narrative one, but was based on a poetic association of ideas and visual concepts which were to be united in an epic montage. The film evolved freely during Eisenstein's travels throughout Mexico. His inspired vision, photographed by the greatest cameraman of his time Eduard Tisse, achieves scenes of archetypal intensity and explores the simultaneity of past and present. There are pastoral scenes of peace under the shadows of the ancient pyramids; enactments of the Easter sacrifice; the celebration of death in the festivities of the Day of the Dead, and great moments of irony juxtaposed with the hunger for life in scenes of an uprising on a hacienda in Central Mexico. Eisenstein's filmic language combines the monumental depiction of Mexican life with the power of historical film drama.
The prologue is inspired by the mural of the Mexican painter by David Alfaro Sequeiros, ‘The Worker’s Funeral’. It establishes Eisenstein’s vision of the simultaneity of the past and present in Mexican life. Its poetic vision and highly subjective perspective focuses the audiences eye, its special expectations and perceptiveness. The prologue takes place in the province of Yucatan, in a landscape shaped by ancient culture, ruined cities and magnificent pyramids. The inhabitants still preserve their old way of life. Even their features retain the characteristics of their forefathers. “Time is Eternity. It might be today. It might be twenty years ago… might be a thousand.” (Eisenstein)
In this episode Eisenstein depicts the Stations of the Cross, combining two actual rituals with three Christ - penitents. It represents the Spanish and Catholic tradition mixing with the native Indian custom and passion; a reminder of the cruel past of the conquest.
This part is set in the province of Tehuantepec, a world of great tropical beauty. It tells a story of Mexican Indian life still uncontaminated by European culture, of the coming of age of a young girl named Concepcion, her marriage to Abundio and her motherhood. Responding to the matriarchal society of this village, Eisenstein creates a soft gentle style for this episode. The composition becomes horizontal and passive. Tisse’s photography turns away from his well known sharpness to a softening of all images.
This episode is inspired by images of the traditional bullfight as represented in the work of the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya. It is a composition of the most essential Spanish elements in Mexican life exemplified in the romance and elegance of colonial life.
rThis is the central episode of the film. The story is set at a pulque-producing hacienda in the province of Hidalgo between fields of the Maguey cactus. The visual character of this episode is inspired by the frescos of Diego Reviera. Unlike the Sandunga episode, it is a sequence of hard contrasting images, full of aggression, machismo and austerity. It is set in 1910, the year that ended the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. An uprising on the hacienda foreshadows the coming Revolution.
This episode is based on the fresco paintings by José Clemente Orozco. It represents scenes of the Mexican Revolution. This largely incomplete episode will be supplemented in the reconstruction with a sequence of original documentary footage of the Revolution.
This final episode shows the urban life of Mexico City in juxtaposition with images of the old traditions and an unselfconscious sense of continuity. The ecstatic imagery of the Day of the Death and the Calavera, images of contrasting levels of reality are inspired by the popular prints of the folk artist Jose Guadalupe Posada.
