Hurray Mexico!
Unedited film that Sergei Eisenstein, Grigoriy Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse shot in Mexico 1931-32. This record only represents the 200,000-plus feet of unedited film that Sergei Eisenstein, Grigoriy Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse shot in Mexico 1931/32 for Mary and Upton Sinclair and three American co-financiers. It was Eisenstein's vision to end up with movie about Mexico in six parts called "Calavera", "Sandunga", "Maguey", "Fiesta", "Soldadera", and "Epilogue". The project was canceled before it was completed due to cost overruns and months-delayed completion, and the producers refused to let Eisenstein attempt to edit anything from the material he had finished after Iosif Stalin called him back to the USSR. From this footage the following pictures were subsequently edited by other hands: Thunder Over Mexico (1933), Eisenstein in Mexico (1933), Death Day (1934), Time in the Sun (1940), and Que Viva Mexico (1979).
From the archive
Sergei Eisenstein shot ¡Que viva México! in Mexico in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression. The courageous financiers of this project were the author Upton Sinclair, his wife Mary Craig and a small group of their friends. They had great difficulties in keeping the production going; the economic crisis forced Sinclair to call a halt to it in early 1932. Shooting was stopped with most of the work completed; only one episode could not be filmed. At the same time Josef Stalin insisted on Eisenstein's return to the Soviet Union. Eisenstein left Mexico with Sinclair's promise in mind; that all the negatives would be send to him to enable the final editing of the film in Moscow. Sinclair tried several times in vain to transfer the film footage to Russia, but the Soviet Film Industry was instructed not to import the film. Eisenstein had been denounced both as a political renegade and as a Trotskyite, which was, in the eyes of Stalin, a serious offence. Preventing Eisenstein from finishing his Mexican film was Stalin's punishment. Consequently Eisenstein was left without film work for several years and started teaching at the State Film School. The Stalinist propaganda, which heaped all the blame on Upton Sinclair for the tragic end of ¡Que viva México!, prevailed. Two films utilizing Eisenstein's film footage were made with Upton Sinclair's permission: Thunder over Mexico made in 1933 by Sol Lesser and Time in the Sun, made by Mary Seton in 1939/40. Thanks to the foresight of Sinclair, who in the 1950s deposited the unedited materials of Eisenstein's film with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the subsequent work of Jay Leyda to make them accessible, all is not lost. We are sure that seventy years of archival care and investment in preserving the essence of this film will eventually result in an authentic reconstruction of this lost film. Many film-historians are convinced that ¡Que viva México! is one of Eisenstein's greatest films. ¡Que viva México! stood at the crossroads of Eisenstein’s artistic development and at a crucial point in the evolution of the art of the cinema. This work deserves more than any other to be taken out of the archives, to be appreciated by a new generation! It is a treasure waiting to be discovered.
Why this is free to watch
Hurray Mexico! (1932) is hosted by the Internet Archive as a public-domain or openly licensed work, which means its copyright has expired, lapsed, or was released by the rights holder. The uploader declared an explicit licence, linked in the source panel. Nitrate streams the file directly from the Archive and hosts no video itself.
- Director
- Sergei Eisenstein
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