Anderson Restored in 2004, Gillo Pontecorvo's extraordinary 1969 film tells the story of William Walker Marlon Brando , a kind of agent provocateur sent to a fictitious Caribbean island to instigate a slave revolt and gain control of the island's sugar. Apparently the actor who plays Jose Dolores was an illiterate sugar cane cutter and had never even seen a film. I've tagged these statements as original research, and they should be removed unless are added in a reasonable time to the claims. When he arrives in Queimada, Walker befriends José Dolores Márquez , whom he entices to lead the slave revolt, and induces leading landowners to reject Portuguese rule. More likely, it was changed so as not to offend Spanish-speaking viewers who represent a large segement of the movie market. Evaristo Marquez's Dolores is similar; he is more of an idea than a character, and unlike in Algiers, the casting of a non-actor does not work. Before dying, Walker looks around and sees himself surrounded by accusatory or passive looks of the poor people in the port.
The musical score by long time Sergio Leone contributor Ennio Morricone captures very well the senselessness of the revolution as well as the fact that the slaves are just pawns in a much larger and dangerous game. Neither character has much depth or development through the picture, and thus neither is really interesting. Based on 11 reviews collected by , the film has an overall approval rating from critics of 82%. It is nice to see a film that does not accept that everything is all right in the world and that such a trivial thing as having sugar for our tea, can have life and death consequences for so many people. In real life the British and Portuguese are , and it is extremely unlikely that the British would have attempted to overthrow a Portuguese colony. The movie also lacks strong central characters. She continued on television throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, when she turned from acting to writing.
The countries involved are different and there are few similarities. This is because Algiers was a relatively modest docudrama set within one city; Queimada is or tries to be a large-scale historical epic, and the static visual style and direction cause many of the film's major set-pieces to falter. Nobody can imagine in a film a portuguese colony being changed to a spanish one, and the names remaining the same. Cast: , Evaristo Márquez, , Norman Hill, Tom Lyons, , , Director: Genres: Keywords: , , , , ,. The equivalent characters in Queimada, Walker and Dolores, are cartoonish by comparison. On this level, the film is mostly successful.
The film shows many stereotypes about portuguese and spanish being more or less the same. The government executes Dolores by hanging. In 1970 she won the for her performance in the play Dear Janet Rosenberg, Dear Mr. Everything feels up close and immediate, and Brando ties everything together with his clever performance. Soon after, Walker, guilt stricken, is accosted as he prepares to depart Queimada. Years later he is sent again to deal with the same rebels that he built up because they have seized too much power that now threatens British sugar interests.
The released film credits the Alan Smithee pseudonym as director because , the film's real director, objected to the way Eszterhas recut the film, and as a result, had his name removed however, in his autobiography, Hollywood Animal, Eszterhas claims that Hiller still sat in the editing room with him to make certain suggestions. Walker's mission is to incite the island's slave population to revolt against their Portuguese masters, in order to open the island for British colonization. Of course, it's far more complicated than that, and Pontecorvo is acutely aware of the modern-day political parallels with his story, especially that of Vietnam. The legendary Ennio Morricone provides the film's rousing, enticing score. Although it makes its points broadly and well, as a movie it doesn't quite work. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than using the archive tool instructions below.
After six years of the uprising, in 1854, the company returns Walker to Queimada with the consent of the British Admiralty, tasking him with suppressing the revolt and pacifying the island. Freedom is something you take for yourself. Pontecorvo , crafts a huge, colorful epic more tuned in to specific time and place than a Hollywood film might be. Please take a moment to review. For all its ambition, Queimada! Even with this handicap, he still manages to give the heroic Jose an air of dignity.
The sugar cane cutters are no better off that's for sure. A man greets him just as Dolores did when Walker first arrived on the island, and then stabs him to death. Marlon Brando is at his best playing the cool, witty Sir William Walker. Even if he wanted to change the Spanish colony of the original script to another colonial power, he could have made it a french, dutch or danish colony, since Portugal never had any colony in the Caribbean. Pontecorvo's film certainly conveys its message very well.
Add to this an intelligent script and beautiful scenery as well as an ironic political story and you have an excellent film. He is equally at ease with the rich upper class plantation owners as with the slave sugar cane cutters allowing him to take advantage of both. Walker establishes a puppet regime beholden to British sugar interests, headed by the idealistic but weak revolutionary Teddy Sanchez Salvatori. Finally, when the government proves ineffective, they are disposed of by the very people who propped them up - and British soldiers intervene directly in the conflict, escalating the brutality. This is used as a criticism of the film, because it can be seen as an example of ethnic and language stereotypes in which the Portuguese language and culture are regarded as being relatively the same as those of the Spanish.
Synopsis The professional mercenary Sir William Walker instigates a slave revolt on the Caribbean island of Queimada in order to help improve the British sugar trade. As with Visconti's The Leopard -- which also had an American star -- Burn! Running time 112 minutes United States 132 minutes Restored Country Italy France Language Italian Spanish Portuguese Burn! Walker manipulates humble porter Jose Dolores Evaristo Marquez into helping him rob a bank; this kick-starts a series of events in which Dolores becomes the head of an island-wide slave revolt. The character José Dolores inspired the logo of the socialist magazine. Algiers had Jean Martin's coolly professional Colonel Matthieu and Brahim Haigag's Ali La Pointe, who goes from street punk to principled revolutionary. This was changed to a portuguese colony allegedely not to offend the spanish audiences. In 1988, Ed Harris played the same character in Alex Cox's Walker.
Brando plays a British , named after the American , who manipulates a to serve the interests of the. Lacks citation, appears to simply be opinion of Mistico. A Companion to the Historical Film Wiley-Blackwell, 2013 , pp. Pontecorvo's static, unemotional cinema verite style worked well with Battle of Algiers; the use of non-actors in key roles enhanced the film's realism. A film not to be missed. That's why the names are still Spanish. Dolores's rebellion is successful, and Walker arranges the assassination of the Portuguese governor in a nighttime coup.