The south of France has always been a gathering place for artists and creative people of all sorts.  The ambience, of course, is so agreeable; from the sun and its beautiful shades of light to the azure sea, the craggy coast, the finest and simplest of cuisine all of which is inhabited by beautiful people – both artificial and real – to present a sensual mix that is utterly stimulating.

From the very first day in April, 1975 when I stepped onto the tarmac at the airport in Nice, I fell in love with the Cote d’ Azure. So the young, movie fan from the North of Canada found himself in the stomping grounds of Picasso, Dali, Giacometti, Brigitte Bardot and the countless other film makers, sculptors, writers who became famous in the 20th century and beyond.

Pablo Picasso, Brigitte Bardot, and Salvador Dali.

I’ve always been excited, to distraction actually, by the roiling and hot atmosphere that accompanies new art – art that is defining new boundaries and startling and enraging as well as beguiling. 

The Riviera was like that during the 30’s through the 60’s as was New York during this very same electric period – when geniuses such as Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan and countless others teamed up to form the legendary Group Theatre, the Actor’s Studio, TV, breakthrough Broadway Plays etc

Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and Clifford Odets.

I had my own, very small taste of virtually untrammeled creative opportunity when I participated in the creation of three specialty television networks – what an exhilarating time!  No money, no rules, no real expectations other than to be noticed; which generally meant being different, new and edgy!  However small a stage and a part, I wouldn’t trade my experience of it for anything.

But back to New York and, in particular, Elia Kazan.  He started to make movies – startling movies, utilizing realistic techniques that would blow away movie goers like me.  In 1952, just 3 years after Joseph Harris directed “Gun Crazy”, Kazan directed “Viva Zapata” starring Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn and written by John Steinbeck – a movie that played like it was made three decades later!

The Maeght Foundation with sculpture by Giacometti.

So here, high above the hills of St. Paul de Vence, on the grounds of the Maeght Foundation, whose rolling lawns are adorned with the sculptures of Giacometti, I put pen to paper (literally) to talk about “Viva Zapata” – a movie experience that I had while skipping school one Thursday afternoon over 50 years ago – an event that forever changed my life.

Movie Review:

Viva Zapata

Directed by Elia Kazan, Written by John Steinbeck — 20th Century Fox 1952
Starring: Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn

In any assembly of the great artists of the 20th century, Elia Kazan, theatre director, writer and film maker, looms large.  Kazan is my favorite director – having made films that, at their time of release, impacted my consciousness in ways that modern movies rarely do.  I’m referring to “On the Waterfront”, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, “East of Eden”, “A Face in the Crowd”, “In Panic in the Streets” and the motion picture that stood as a political and ideological statement as well as artistic – “Viva Zapata.”

The movie’s bona fides are impeccable and interesting. Aside from the presence of Kazan, Brando, Quinn and Steinbeck, it was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and also starred Jean Peters (soon to be the wife of Howard Hughes) and the distinguished Broadway actor Joseph Wiseman in the powerful role of a politico with no allegiance other than to that of power and the story is of the famous Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata.

The Stalinist Fernando (center), attempting to convince Zapata to join with him.

My love affair with movies seems to allow me to overlook certain “details” such as a possible distracting, make-up job on Brando in order to transform him into a Mexican with Indian blood.  Such critical failings, if failings at all, didn’t bother me –and still don’t, as the message of freedom and courage and honesty stand out with such power and simplicity.

The movie is about a peasant revolutionary’s rise to power and his ultimate renunciation of it as corrupting and defiling.  When the shadowy figure played by Wiseman beseeches Zapata not to resign and return to his village, Zapata replies “Now I know you – no fields, no farm, no wife, no woman, no friends, no love.  You only destroy –“.  The Wiseman figure represents the force of communism/stalinism – interested solely in revolutionary power not reform and justice.

The movie concludes with the brutal and horrendous assassination of Zapata, engineered in part by the Wiseman character, but his mutilated and unrecognizable body when displayed in the town square, is rejected as not being the real Emiliano Zapata.  The peasants say that Zapata still lives and will return when needed.  These words are spoken over a stirring shot of Zapata’s white stallion running free in the mountains, having escaped the ambush.

The “White Stallion” ending was insisted upon by Darryl F. Zanuck and always thought to be corny by Kazan and some critics.  I love the ending and its symbolism and point to the existence of the Zapatistas, a revolutionary group espousing land reform operating in Southern Mexico today as evidence of its aptness and universality.

Current Zapatistas.

Brando’s Academy Award nominated performance is simply awe-inspiring and my gut reaction that illicit Thursday afternoon over 5 decades ago in the Paramount Theatre was to distrust authority from that day forward.