evanston_dad A not very engaging biography of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who as portrayed in this movie was a hero of the Mexican people and liberated them from the tyranny of government oppression.Really, the movie exists as a star vehicle for Wallace Beery, and he plays Villa the same way he played every character, as a sloppy, lovable lunkhead. The film rather humorously and without irony asks us to adore Villa even while portraying him as a sadistic, violent outlaw, as if it's not even aware that it's providing such an unsavory portrait of its main character. The film's rather dull over all, and even though I know it was a convention of the time, it's tough to tolerate actors like Joseph Schildkraut and Fay Wray made up in dark makeup to play Mexicans. And don't even get me started on the accents, which sound like they should be coming from anyone in the world other than people who actually were born and lived in Mexico.This film received four Academy Award nominations in 1934 but won only one of them, that for Best Assistant Director (John Waters, no not THAT John Waters). The other three nominations were for Outstanding Production, Best Writing (Adaptation), , and Best Sound Recording.Grade: C

MartinHafer Huh?! This film begins with a prologue where the people at MGM admit that this entire "biography" is fictionalized!! Then, I ask, what's the point?!?! It's like the opposite of the old TV show DRAGNET, where the names were changed to protect the innocent. Here in this film, ONLY the names are true--everything else has been changed!! Aye, aye, aye! While I am a huge fan of classic Hollywood, this is the sort of film that they did worst--with absolutely no respect for the source material. Wallace Beery looks and sounds nothing like Villa and Villa is more a sentimental comic book bandit than who he was in reality.As for the film, Wallace Beery seems to play....well...Wallace Beery--or at least a sociopathic Wallace Beery with a heart of gold! He kills, he fights, he loves, he mugs for the camera but still, down deep he loves his country and President Madero. It's all pretty entertaining and well made (especially with support from actors such as Leo Carrillo and George E. Stone) but whitewashes the life of Villa. Because of this, I can't recommend it to anyone unless they really have no desire to learn about the real life Villa.During one of Pancho's raids, he finds an American newspaper man (Stu Erwin) and kidnaps him, because he wants the reporter to glamorize the bandit's exploits. So, Erwin has an unusual inside view of this great man--a lot like Arthur Kennedy's role in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. And the bulk of the film shows the battles, the ups and downs and death of Villa.By the way, the man they got to play Francisco Madero was amazingly similar to the real Madero--looking like his twin. At least in this sense the film got it right.

theowinthrop Wallace Beery was a complicated man. He was (from what I have read of him) a nasty customer in many ways - he skirted the edge of the law on several occasions. But he was an entertaining performer, in both drama (CHINA SEAS, THE CHAMP) or comedy (DINNER AT EIGHT, A DATE WITH JUDY). Although his Oscar (in the first tie vote in Academy history - with Fredric March in DR. JECKYL AND MR. HYDE) was for THE CHAMP, in some ways his most sympathetic role was as Pancho Villa in VIVA VILLA.It is rather curious that this film, the first really serious sound film to study the Mexican Revolution, picked up on Villa as the hero, rather than Francisco Madero, the original leader of the revolution in 1910. Madero appears in the film (played by Henry B. Walthall, in a good performance), but it is Villa's story (or what passes for it). He was more colorful than the unfortunate Madero, now best recalled for his murder in 1913 by General Huerta. Villa was a highly successful bandit (a model for Alfonso Badoya's great bandit in THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRES), who did support some amount of social reform for the lower classes - but he never was as committed to it as his southern rival Zapata. In fact, when Villa finally ended fighting the government, he retired to a large landed estate he had acquired.But he had great color...for good or bad. On one occasion he was giving an interview to a newspaperman, when he noted a drunken soldier who was making too much noise, so that he could not hear the newsman's questions. Quietly, without looking vicious or nasty, Villa took out his gun and shot and killed the soldier. He then resumed the interview with the horrified newsman. Villa was like that. He considered his killing someone like that natural. He was an odd man, very childlike at times, very cunning (to a point rather clever as a military strategist), and highly murderous when angered. He loved women, and would "marry" many to satisfy their scruples if they hesitated having sex with him. This led Theodore Roosevelt to make the rather loopy comment that Villa was an evil murderer and bigamist.Villa was also the last man in history (prior to Osama Ben Laden's tools) to attack the continental United States. Angered that President Woodrow Wilson stopped supporting him and his men in 1916, Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico, killing several Americans. The failure of the Carranza government to arrest or catch Villa led Wilson to blunder into Mexican affairs by sending General John Pershing and a large armed force into northern Mexico to catch Villa. Villa led Pershing a merry chase, and finally the Americans had to withdraw in humiliation. Actually that was his highpoint as a public figure. Within two years his army was in ruins and he had to surrender to the government forces. He retired to his ranch, only to be assassinated by personal enemies in 1923.Beery was not the only actor to play Villa. Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas both played the role in films too. But the Beery film is best in making the Mexican into a tragic hero. He is an overgrown child, who needs a father figure to bring out his best side (briefly found in Madero), and does not fully know when he does wrong. But he also has a sense of right and wrong: witness his willingness to humiliate himself before his enemy General Pascal (Joseph Schildkraut), to save lives - only to find that Madero has pardoned him already. Later, when he learns that Madero was betrayed and murdered by Pascal, he captures the General and gives the latter a brutal punishment, but one that the audience fully supports.His friendship with the John Reed character (Stu Erwin as Johnny Sykes) shows that he was capable of being a more reasonable man, but was troubled by his behavior and his failures. He never did fully deliver the reforms to Mexico that he had pledged Madero he would bring. In the end, as he lays dying, Sykes is there to comfort him - telling him how Mexico will honor his memory. But he dies crying the line in the "summary" line above - what had he done wrong indeed!Not the historic Villa, but a worthy portrait of a fascinating man.

RodReels-2 From the hokey dying scenes (and there's more than one in this turkey) to the purely fictitious stories told about this Mexican legend, this old movie just doesn't hold up. Lauded in its day for performances that now seem ridiculously silly, this is one Beery bad biopic. Outside of some good stunt work and passable scenes of battle, there's not much to recommend it. And somebody tell me what's with the artist who will never draw a bull and Pancho Villa who seems to have a phobia of pigeons? I got so tired of this dumb running gag that before this movie was over, I was not chanting "Viva, Villa!" but "Die, Pancho, Die".