Viva Zapata!
| Viva Zapata! | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Elia Kazan |
| Produced by | Darryl F. Zanuck |
| Written by | John Steinbeck |
| Starring |
Marlon Brando Jean Peters Anthony Quinn |
| Music by | Alex North |
| Cinematography | Joseph MacDonald |
| Edited by | Barbara McLean |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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Running time
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113 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Spanish |
| Budget | $1.8 million |
| Box office | $1,900,000 (US rentals) |
Viva Zapata! is a 1952 biographical film starring Marlon Brando and directed by Elia Kazan. The screenplay was written by John Steinbeck, using as a guide Edgcomb Pinchon's book, Zapata the Unconquerable. The cast includes Jean Peters and, in an Academy Award-winning performance, Anthony Quinn.
The movie is a fictionalized account of the life of Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata from his peasant upbringing, through his rise to power in the early 1900s, to his death.
To give the film as authentic a feel as possible, Kazan and producer Darryl F. Zanuck studied the numerous photographs that were taken during the revolutionary years, the period between 1909 and 1919 when Zapata led the fight to restore land taken from the people during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.
Kazan was especially impressed with the Agustin Casasola collection of photographs and he attempted to duplicate their visual style in the film. Kazan also acknowledged the influence of Roberto Rossellini's Paisan.
Emiliano Zapata (Marlon Brando) is part of a delegation sent to complain about injustices to corrupt longtime President Porfirio Díaz (Fay Roope), but Díaz dismisses their concerns, and tries to bribe their leader, offering him some land which Zapata rejects. As a result, Zapata is driven to open rebellion, along with his brother Eufemio (Anthony Quinn). He in the south and Pancho Villa (Alan Reed) in the north unite under the leadership of naive reformer Francisco Madero (Harold Gordon).
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Wikipedia