Burn!
Gillo Pontecorvo's most famous film, The Battle of Algiers (1966), depicts, documentary-fashion though it's also fictional, the travails of the French-Algerian War: an imperialist power seeking to crush colonial resistance. In Queimada (Burn!)--from 1969--the subject is the same but decorated with a major movie star, Marlon Brando, playing a fictionalized version of William Walker (1824-1860), the American adventurer and mercenary who established himself as leader of Nicaragua and was later overthrown and executed in Honduras.
Brando's Sir William Walker is English, working on the fictional Caribbean sugar-producing island of Queimada, Portuguese for "Burned." The name stems from a few centuries back when the Portuguese Empire controlled the place. Running into resistance from the islanders, the Portuguese military burned the island, making it the kind of place empires destroy and then rebuild, keeping control over a subservient population.
Walker arrives to oversee British sugar production. As our days are a time of Big Oil, the mid-nineteenth century was a time of Big Sugar. Native peoples within this Caribbean-centered enterprise worked lands owned by distant overlords. On Queimada, a leader emerges from among the poor and oppressed: José Dolores (Evaristo Marquez, a first time actor doing a good job working with the experienced Brando). Dolores leads a successful insurrection against the government and for a time rules as General Dolores, wearing European uniform with gold epaulettes.
Walker, throughout this period, offers advice and encouragement to Dolores. Recalled to England, Walker spends ten years doing we're not sure what, before going back to Queimada, now firmly in British control. He's now the chief advisor and strategist working with the red-clad British army forces trying to contain a guerrilla insurgency led by popular local hero, Dolores.
Walker, well aware of the island's past, uses the scorched earth techniques of the Portuguese, burning out the guerrillas and finally capturing Dolores alive. Walker feels it necessary to just make Dolores vanish--pay him off, give him a good life on some remote island. Executing him as per the wishes of the British authorities will make him a martyr, his story spreading to other islands under Britain's rule. Still, Dolores is taken to the gallows, while Walker leaves, only to get stabbed to death by one of Dolores's sympathizers.
The main problem I had with this movie is that it exists in two versions, one at 112 minutes (this one dubbed into English), the other at 132 (the complete version in the original Italian). I saw the shorter version. Although it's impressive in spots, especially the scenes of the British Army wrecking the island in their anti-insurgency goal, Burn!, the English version, seems choppy in the first half, shifting from scene to scene while lacking a logical flow pattern. There seems far less cutting in the second half, thus, it's a better viewing experience. Why some studio executive or executives decided to slice up Pontecorvo's film for American distribution is anyone's guess. Did the film's theme of imperialism challenged by native strength remind them too much of the then current war in Vietnam?
I want to see Pontecorvo's uncut Italian version. I suspect it's quite good. The 112 minute version, unfortunately, just gives an impression of something ambitious and thought-provoking; a look back at British imperial times when the main difference between that empire and America's current one are the weapons and the clothes. Walker's cynicism and amorality have also survived intact.
Vic Neptune
Gillo Pontecorvo's most famous film, The Battle of Algiers (1966), depicts, documentary-fashion though it's also fictional, the travails of the French-Algerian War: an imperialist power seeking to crush colonial resistance. In Queimada (Burn!)--from 1969--the subject is the same but decorated with a major movie star, Marlon Brando, playing a fictionalized version of William Walker (1824-1860), the American adventurer and mercenary who established himself as leader of Nicaragua and was later overthrown and executed in Honduras.
Brando's Sir William Walker is English, working on the fictional Caribbean sugar-producing island of Queimada, Portuguese for "Burned." The name stems from a few centuries back when the Portuguese Empire controlled the place. Running into resistance from the islanders, the Portuguese military burned the island, making it the kind of place empires destroy and then rebuild, keeping control over a subservient population.
Walker arrives to oversee British sugar production. As our days are a time of Big Oil, the mid-nineteenth century was a time of Big Sugar. Native peoples within this Caribbean-centered enterprise worked lands owned by distant overlords. On Queimada, a leader emerges from among the poor and oppressed: José Dolores (Evaristo Marquez, a first time actor doing a good job working with the experienced Brando). Dolores leads a successful insurrection against the government and for a time rules as General Dolores, wearing European uniform with gold epaulettes.
Walker, throughout this period, offers advice and encouragement to Dolores. Recalled to England, Walker spends ten years doing we're not sure what, before going back to Queimada, now firmly in British control. He's now the chief advisor and strategist working with the red-clad British army forces trying to contain a guerrilla insurgency led by popular local hero, Dolores.
Walker, well aware of the island's past, uses the scorched earth techniques of the Portuguese, burning out the guerrillas and finally capturing Dolores alive. Walker feels it necessary to just make Dolores vanish--pay him off, give him a good life on some remote island. Executing him as per the wishes of the British authorities will make him a martyr, his story spreading to other islands under Britain's rule. Still, Dolores is taken to the gallows, while Walker leaves, only to get stabbed to death by one of Dolores's sympathizers.
The main problem I had with this movie is that it exists in two versions, one at 112 minutes (this one dubbed into English), the other at 132 (the complete version in the original Italian). I saw the shorter version. Although it's impressive in spots, especially the scenes of the British Army wrecking the island in their anti-insurgency goal, Burn!, the English version, seems choppy in the first half, shifting from scene to scene while lacking a logical flow pattern. There seems far less cutting in the second half, thus, it's a better viewing experience. Why some studio executive or executives decided to slice up Pontecorvo's film for American distribution is anyone's guess. Did the film's theme of imperialism challenged by native strength remind them too much of the then current war in Vietnam?
I want to see Pontecorvo's uncut Italian version. I suspect it's quite good. The 112 minute version, unfortunately, just gives an impression of something ambitious and thought-provoking; a look back at British imperial times when the main difference between that empire and America's current one are the weapons and the clothes. Walker's cynicism and amorality have also survived intact.
Vic Neptune
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