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After witnessing his father being whipped to death, grown-up Mexican bandit Wallace Beery (as Pancho Villa) becomes his country's revolutionary war hero. Boozy reporter Stuart Irwin (as Johnny Sykes) and peace-loving liberator Henry B. Walthall (as Francisco Madero) are important allies. Nurturing a taste for ladies and liquor, Mr. Beery marries Spanish spitfire Katherine De Mille (the real-life daughter of director Cecil B., as Rosita Morales). Later, Beery is tempted to add beautiful Fay Wray (as Teresa) to his harem.

The Mexican armies sing "La Cucaracha, la Cucaracha!" while future "East Side Kid" David Durand plays the bugle.

Beery's vanquished rival Joseph Schildkraut (as General Pascal) suffers a torturous fate, but dastardly Donald Cook (as Don Felipe) gets a last shot. MGM production values are high for this hammy, heavy-handed star vehicle, wisely introduced as "fictionalized." With "box office" Beery at the helm, "Viva Villa!" was a hit. It won critical acclaim at Venice, where Berry was the festival's "Best Actor". In a brief scene, the real-life son of early movie idol Francis X. Bushman plays a nerdy newspaperman ("Wallace Calloway").

****** Viva Villa! (4/10/34) Jack Conway ~ Wallace Beery, Stuart Irwin, Henry B. Walthall, Donald Cook

About the only thing that IS true is that Pancho Villa fought on the side of Madero in the Mexican revolution. But you've got Wallace Beery doing what Beery did best - playing an amoral character as endearingly as is possible.

The film shows Villa's history back to childhood, when apparently his father was whipped to death for daring to speak up for his rights to the local land baron. In fact, nobody today knows exactly who Villa's father was. He is shown robbing his way through Mexico until he meets Francisco Madera and becomes quite enamored of the little fellow, played by Henry B. Walthall. There was a General Pascual Orozco - probably the treacherous person Joseph Schildkraut was supposed to be playing - but his fate was not what was shown in the film.

So the big picture is that this is a completely fictional biography of Pancho Villa who changes from bandit to revolutionary officer to exile and ultimately to - president of Mexico???

The film tries to deflect blame from all of the things he does by claiming that Villa could not tell right from wrong and was thus confused when people tried to hold him to account. He creates a persistent and ultimately fatal enemy in Don Filipe when he causes the death of his sister, played by Fay Wray. I've seen several versions of what happens to Wray at Villa's hands, and all but one version is vague, probably because this film was released almost simultaneously with the inception of the production code. As for what actually happened to Villa after Madero - the truth would probably been more interesting although not as romantic as the film, and the truth would definitely have been harder to film for it would have involved the invasion of the US, a counter American incursion into Mexico, Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing, airstrikes, German espionage, and a stolen skull.

An interesting aside - Lee Tracy initially was playing the role of the field journalist rather than Stuart Erwin. Tracy had left Warner Brothers the year before for MGM. But his career with MGM was over when, while on location in Mexico, a drunken Tracy relieved himself on his balcony and unknowingly on the heads of several Mexican federales standing below.

Viva Villa was a hard luck movie. Filmed in part on location in Mexico City, during production, a plane carrying movie footage to Culver City crashed, requiring reshoots of the lost material. Wallace Beery, always an obnoxious star, demanded extra salary before he would appear again in the lost scenes. Lee Tracy, who originally played the part of the newspaper reporter, while on location was accused of getting drunk and urinating from his balcony room onto revelers celebrating the Mexican Independence Day. Tracy's action caused a national scandal. MGM managed to smuggle him out of the country. Then Louis B. Mayer fired Tracy from MGM and also got him blacklisted. Tracy's replacement, Stuart Erwin, was terrible as the reporter. Due to the delays, Viva Villa did not get released until after July 1, 1934, the date the Motion Picture Production Code took effect. MGM had to make changes to meet new code requirements, such as a scene where Fay Wray's character is whipped. Jack Conway took over for Howard Hawks as director to finish the production, which may explain the change in the movie pacing. The movie starts off fast, with a great scene of Villa and his riders taking over a town and Villa issuing swift justice as the new judge in town. Viva Villa never maintains that pace. But,one big plus, Leo Carillo as Villa's homicidal sidekick is great.

Mexico in the 80's is ruled by tyrants. As a boy, Pancho Villa (Wallace Beery) exacted revenge upon the man who whipped his father to death. He would become a bandit in the desert with the song, La Cucaracha.

I am surprised that this got any awards consideration. It is not a bad movie, but it is not a serious movie either. Beery is playing Villa like a hillbilly bandit without any sense of danger. He has too much comedic sensibilities with all his facial ticks. It's weird. It is like a spoof but not really. It is a fun time shoot them up war film, but one cannot take this movie seriously in any way even when it tries for darker material.

Whether you enjoy 'Viva Villa!' is dependent on what your feelings are on star Wallace Beery. Have found him a lot of fun in some roles, in others he overdoes the hammy bluster and takes one out of the film. So my stance on Beery is mixed. The supporting cast is a quite talented one. Am familiar with Jack Conway, though as others have said the great Howard Hawks started it, and have liked (a lot in most cases) what has been seen of his work. The subject matter was very fascinating.

Found myself quite mixed on 'Viva Villa!', leaning towards moderately sort of liking it but not without having some big reservations with it. It is a long way from being bad, with a good deal to admire and is quite entertaining. It just doesn't do an interesting man with an interesting story justice and no it is not just that most of it is fictionalised and even romanticised. Despite its good merits, its distracting flaws made 'Viva Villa!' an uneven experience for me.

'Viva Villa!' looks great. Some may argue that the sets are obviously studio bound, but they nonetheless are suitably grand in scale and look and still make the jaw drop today. The black and white photography is beautiful, though imagine how the film would have looked like in colour, it perhaps may have given the film even more sweep. The music score is stirring enough and it is expertly directed by Conway.

Parts of the script compel and have an amusing irony, while the story does have some rollicking action and some quite epic crowd scenes. The supporting cast generally do quite well, with an attractive Fay Wray bringing heart to the proceedings and Joseph Schildkraut and Henry B. Walthall (as the film's most colourful supporting character) suitably ruthless. Donald Cook also does admirably.

Beery though was more troubling in the lead role and a lot of the problem was to do with how the character was written. He does give it everything and is charismatic, but the characterisation felt inconistent and like the writers weren't sure what they wanted the character to be. The script has moments but tended to be awkward and much of the humour felt overdone in use and how it was delivered.

The story could be dull and too slight, very on the surface and with no real depth. A shorter length of about 15-20 minutes would have helped. Generally the characters were colourless stereotypes and some of the portrayal of Mexicans don't hold up particularly well today and could be seen as tasteless. While the supporting cast were generally fine, for me Stuart Erwin was bland though props to him for being a practically last minute replacement.

On the whole, not bad but heavily flawed. 5.5/10

So Pancho Villa did not conquer Mexico twice, one for his dear friend Madero, and again to preserve Madero's legacy. We'll agree that the story of this movie is typical Hollywood piffle, ahistorical hokum about how Wallace Beery, sometimes playing the villain he did so often in the 1920s, sometimes the clown in his later years, did this stuff for love of Henry B. Walthall (in his own last great role as Madero). Half of it was the stuff that the yellow press offered to feed a bored nation to the north, and half of it was stuff the film makers made up because it made no sense to them.

Even so, there is a kernel of truth in the story that defies our understanding: how could a peasant, ignorant as pig manure, do what he did? Part of it can be explained by the utter incompetence of the people his forces faced, the stultified and decadent rulers of Mexico who held power out of habit. They could not conceive of a challenge, and so they did not bother making what they had worth fighting and dying for. And so, when they faced men and women who had taken from them everything worth living for, they lost. And those who took it from them saw in Villa someone who was one of them, writ larger, and loved him for that, and did the impossible.

One of the slogans of the US Marines is "'The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer. " That's exactly backwards. The difficult takes as long as it takes. We know how to do the difficult; it's just hard. The impossible, though is another matter. What we call 'impossible' is often just something that no one has ever done before. All it takes is a different perspective, and the will, and ever afterwards, people will say of it "Oh, any idiot could have done that." Quite true. That's the different perspective. That perspective is genius.

And that's why Villa was a genius. He did what no one thought possible, because no one thought of doing it that way, because it was impossible. The French had their jacqueries, the English Wat Tyler's Rebellion, Germany and Austria-Hungary the 1848. None of these had come to anything. Educated people knew that. Educated people have a hard time dealing with genius. Education can teach you to do things that others have already done, and give you a chance to make a small advance. But genius, the overturning of an accepted order usually comes from the outside; insiders have no need to overturn society, they are quite happy to become part of it, to buy in. Villa, having gotten what he wanted, turned his back on the whole affair, because it did not interest him. He had what he wanted, he went home, and he was shot. And because no one could make sense of what he did, could reconcile the two, Wallace Beery could play him as half clown and half villain.

Now, as to the question of who really wrote Shakespeare....

I'm still not clear on how MGM got away with this film. Pancho Villa had only been dead for 10 years and his famous raid on Columbus, New Mexico almost 20 years. Surely not enough time for people to have forgotten Villa or what he did.

But the most famous thing he did, raid into the USA and provide a pretext for intervention into Mexican affairs, is completely forgotten by this film. The Villa we see here is a lovable lug of a guy, a typical Wallace Beery part who gets his social conscience awakened by Francisco Madero and gives up banditry to become a revolutionary.

If you're a big fan of Wallace Beery and liked him in such films as Min and Bill and Treasure Island than Viva Villa is simply an extension of the characters he played there.

Actually I think the most interesting character in the film is that of Francisco Madero. Henry B. Walthall's performance is the best and I wish Walthall had starred in a film where he was the central character. Madero was as you see in the film a man of high ideals, betrayed and assassinated by his supporters. But it was hardly Pancho Villa who took vengeance on his betrayers. After long time Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz was overthrown in 1911 and then Madero assassinated in 1912, Mexico fell apart much like the former Yugoslavia did almost 20 years ago. Civil war raged there for a generation. Eventually it united under the PRI party which elected all of its presidents until Vicente Fox.

I've never really liked this film, it stray so far from the facts it's laughable. The players go through their familiar roles and it's a good cast that Howard Hawks later Jack Conway put through their paces. Of course the most famous story coming out of this film is about Lee Tracy getting blotto and going out on a balcony and raining on some Mexican soldiers. Got him fired from the film and Stu Erwin got the break and Tracy's part as the newspaper reporter who popularizes Villa.

If in fact you consider it a break Erwin got to be in Viva Villa.

While the story is a bit on the fanciful side, it still has a good period look, and some of photography and action sequences are excellent. Wallace Beery is not as hammy as usual and does a creditable job. Henry B. Walthall is good (as usual) as Francisco Madero and turns in the best performance of the movie. Interestingly enough, while some characters (Madero, Villa)actually use their real names, others such as John Reed, Victoriano Huerta and Rodolfo Fierro are fictionalized as Johnny Sykes, Pascal and Sierra, respectively. Perhaps the best thing about it is, despite when it was made it treats the subject matter with dignity and has a real respect for Mexico and Mexicans. Some of the shots look as though they were taken in the 1910s thanks to Jack Conway's and Howard Hawk's direction.

Wallace Beery does fine here as the legendary Mexican bandit-cum-patriot Pancho Villa. He pretty much pleases himself as he and his men maraud the countryside imposing their own unique sort of revolutionary justice. Then he meets the sophisticated democrat Madero (Henry B. Walthall) who dreams of a country free of European domination, but he wants one that is peaceful and law-abiding, so Pancho isn't a natural fit for the task. After a few jitters, though, he agrees to put his men under the command of General Pascal (Joseph Schildkraut) and next thing there's an abdication and a new man in what is now the presidential palace. Content that all is well, Pancho returns to his old ways and is only just saved from the firing squad by an intervention from the President, though instead he is banished to Texas. It's when he is awakened there with some shocking news that he returns south with vengeance on his mind. The whole thing is loosely based on the real men that feature, but if you want an history lesson then this isn't the place. It's an out-and-out adventure movie that centres around a character actor who frequently looks like he's about to start to giggle, and there are a couple of decent supporting roles from Fay Wray as "Theresa", Stuart Elwin as the newshound Jonny and the scene-stealing George E. Stone who just simply refuses to draw a bull on anything, favouring a pigeon instead. It's fairly action-packed and it does offer a slight nod to the principled sentiments of democracy and freedom, but essentially it's just a lively outing for Beery.

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".

In various venues, I've read some film writers' claims that the whipping of Fay Wray's character, while she laughs, was deleted due to the newly enforced production code at the time of this film's release. This claim is not accurate. The current TCM copy doesn't show this scene, however, the full whipping scene was regularly shown, in the 1960s, on either NYC station WNEW 5 or WCBS 2 whenever "Viva Villa" was aired. Another now-deleted scene showed Leo Carillo's character lining up captured federal soldiers, three at a time, front to back, and executing them with one bullet in order to save ammunition. I remember thinking how violent this film was for its time.

The life of Mexican rebel and maverick Pancho Villa is brought to the screen is in this highly fictional but yet log-line or plot points accurate story. This is clear to anyone because the opening has one of those disclaimers that states that though the story is true, the movie has fictionalized certain scenes and scenarios but is in essence a true portrait. Whatever! That said, despite unexpected tonal shifts (Howard Hawks was the original director before Jack Conway was brought in and re-shot a lot of his footage. It makes me wonder how the new Exorcist movie that Renny Harlin is reshooting will play) the film is a touching portrait of a man of the people who could never lead a nation. It does not patronize the dastardly or generally inhumane tactics of Villa. As far as Villa was concerned, it is war and one must vanquish the enemies completely. Take no prisoners was his approach. It has the typical, rotten scoundrel and bandit to careful redemption of the soul arc but is handled atypical which is a plus. Beery, one of the biggest stars Hollywood ever produced is solid in the role and should have gotten an Oscar nomination. Directing is solid except for sudden comic ouvres among the chaos stopping the movie from achieving rich resonance but overall enabling it to still work. Sets are huge, action sequences are passable and scenarios and dialogue are either very good or cliched in certain respects. But I think the ending of the movie has one of the best written scenes and final lines I've ever heard. I won't spoil it but it lets you know that what you've seen and read about is essentially a myth and legend and that's what people choose to remember and live on. Kinda like the ending of the movie Big Fish.

A drudge of a movie, one that has no business being 115 minutes long. Wallace Beery is awful, playing Pancho Villa as a childlike oaf. Fay Wray is mostly wasted, though there is some pre-Code infamy associated with the scene of her being whipped (in shadow). The story wanders and in its bloat includes a silly subplot of an American newspaper reporter, and a recurring gag about Villa fearing pigeons being drawn and an artist who refuses to draw a bull for him. The directors warn us at the outset that the film is fictionalized, but then scroll messages across the screen regularly and present it as history. It's just a mess, badly acted, badly directed, and badly edited, and I haven't even gotten to the portrayals of Mexicans (e.g. one who we're asked to believe is so ignorant he doesn't even know his last name).

It's too bad, because there's something interesting about a film about a revolutionary fighting for the common man made at a time in America when the common man was pretty angry about a system that had failed them. The only reason to watch this is the cinematography of James Wong Howe, which is beautiful in bursts throughout the film, e.g. the crowd scenes, with tight shots on individual faces, the armies massing with long shadows cast by horses, the majestic cities, the horsemen riding through fields of cacti, the battle scenes, and wonderful interior shops in places like a grand ball and a tavern. That is what gives the film its production value, and which hasn't grown old like the rest of it.

Good western movie with good all around production and performances.Very gritty and not too watered down in it's violent sequences.The only flaw here is the fictionalised version of the main characters story which is not what most people want from a profound historical icon as Pacho Villa.Surely he must have had a great true to life story to be told thru Hollywood without resorting to this over mythologised version.Also,the great actress Fay Wray was so underused here as well.Her makeup here was also terribly done,making her look like some kind of evil Vampiress.Only for fans of Mexican Westerns and big fans of the lead actors.....

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

VIVA VILLA! (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1934), directed by Jack Conway, stars the Academy Award winning Wallace Beery ("The Champ" 1931) in one of his most notable film roles, that of the notorious Mexican bandit leader, Pancho Villa (1877-1923). Suggested by the book written by Edgcumb Finchon and O.B. Stade, the film itself is not so much an authentic biographical account on Villa's personal life, but, a fictional story scripted by Ben Hecht that gives its viewers an idea of what's to be shown: "FORWARD: This saga of the Mexican hero, Pancho Villa, does not come out of the archives of history. It is fiction woven out of truth, and inspired by a love of the half-legendary Pancho, and the glamorous country he served."

For its eight minute prologue: "Mexico in the 1880s, a land cringing under the lone whip of Diaz the Tyrant," shows Pancho, the boy (Phillip Cooper) forced to witness his hard-working father (Frank Puglia) strung up at the whipping post for speaking out against a greedy Spanish landowner who has taken away his home and property along with his fellow peons. After the hundred lashes are carried out, the dead body is cut down, left on the street as a warning to the others. Later, Pancho, "the little avenger" during the night, awaits, stabs and kills his father's executioner, fleeing to the hills of Chihuahua. Years later, Pancho Villa, (Wallace Beery), the man, having earned the title of "La Cucaracha" (the cockroach), forms a bandit army, assisted by his trigger-happy henchman, Sierra (Leo Carrillo), to avenge the rich and give to the "peons." With the assistance of Johnny Sykes (Stuart Erwin), an American reporter for the New York World, Villa's name becomes well-known through the accounts printed in the newspaper. Don Felipe (Donald Cook) a wealthy landowner who sides with Villa's cause, introduces him to his friend, Francisco Madero (Henry B. Walthall), a gentle man known to all as "The Christ Fool." An eternal friendship forms as Madero offers Villa advise into helping him form a revolutionary Army. Though he does help with his cause, Madero is disappointed that Villa makes war as a bandit rather than a soldier. After the war, Villa, honored a hero by many, especially Don Felipe's sister, Teresa (Fay Wray), is soon exiled to El Paso, Texas, by orders of his rival, General Pascal (Joseph Schildkraut). After learning the assassination of President Madero, Villa returns to Mexico to avenge his friend's death, leading to another brutal revolution.

Quite popular upon its release, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, VIVA VILLA! offers some very grim moments. Aside from the aforementioned flogging of Villa's father in the opening segment, another intense scene occurs indicating the method of torture towards General Pascal under Villa's orders. With females of minor importance, Fay Wray, the now legendary star of the original KING KONG (RKO Radio, 1933), surprisingly has a relatively small role as opposed to Katherine DeMille's temperamental Rosita Morales, as one of Villa's wives, who gathers more attention and screen time here. Wray's climatic moment occurs in a darkened room as her Teresa laughs hysterically at the angry Villa, forcing him to continually whip her, as shown through their silhouette images on the wall. This existing scene, among a few others, have vanished from circulating prints since the 1980s, shortening the original length from 115 to 109 minutes.

Other members of the cast worth noting are: George E. Stone (Emilio Chavito, the artist who's rather draw pigeons than bulls); David Durand (The Mexican bugle boy who uses the American slang term, "ain't"); Paul Porcasi (The Priest); and, in smaller roles, Mischa Auer and Akim Tamiroff, among others.

As much as its leading players could have been enacted by natural born Hispanic performers, such is not the case here. Beery's co-star, Leo Carrillo, would have made an agreeable Villa, with Gilbert Roland playing Sierra; and Mexican spitfire Lupe Velez in Fay Wray's part. Of the actors to have portrayed Pancho Villa in later years, Yul Brynnar or Telly Salavas for example, Beery, in mustache, large sombrero and Spanish dialect (which he tends to lose from time to rime) is as part of Beery as King Henry VIII or Captain Bligh is to Charles Laughton. Interestingly, Beery, having played Villa in the silent 1917 chaptered serial, PATRIA, would become a Mexican bandito once again in the western comedy, THE BAD MAN (MGM, 1941), where he not only physically resembles his Pancho Villa portrayal, but assumes the character name of Pancho Lopez. Stuart Erwin, who reportedly replaced Lee Tracy during production, might seem miscast at first, but acceptable considering how Tracy's familiar comedic style and gestures might have turned this bio-drama into a somewhat unintentional comedy.

Reportedly controversial through its assumptions and enactment from the Mexicans point of view, VIVA VILLA may continue to be so today depending on its acceptance as a motion picture. The edited form taken from reissue prints of VIVA VILLA!, distributed to video cassette in 1993, is also the same presented on Turner Classic Movies cable channel. One can only hope a complete version of VIVA VILLA! will turn up again someday in honor of the man named Villa and the legendary song known as "La Cucaracha!" (***1/2)

If you have to see one American biopic of a Mexican revolutionary with the word "Viva" in the title, then make it "Viva Zapata" and not this loud, stupid movie featuring loud, stupid Wally Beery at his loudest and stupidest. The guy's performance is literally headache inducing and after about the thirtieth "shut up!" I found myself saying that to the screen. There are some arresting images courtesy of co DP's James Wong Howe and Charles Clarke, especially the battle scenes and the scene where Fay Wray is once again scared by a gorilla, but in general this thing is one long Hollywood dump on Mexican history and culture. Kind of ironic in light of the Lee Tracy incident, huh? Give it a C.