Viva Villa! (1934) on Netflix
Young Pancho Villa stabs one of the men who whipped his father to death and flees to the hills of Chihuahua. Grown, he leads rebel bandits against wealthy landowners.
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- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.3/101,771 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Plot summary
Pancho Villa spends his childhood in Chihuahua, Mexico, where his poor father loses his land and is whipped to death for protesting. The young Villa stabs one of the killers and takes to the hills. As a grown man he rides with rebel bandits, among them his trusted ally Sierra, killing wealthy landowners; the peons hail them as heroes. A rich aristocrat, Don Felipe, introduces Villa to Francisco Madero, an eloquent reformer who resents what Mexico has become under President Porfirio Díaz and persuades Villa to fight for liberty rather than personal gain. Coarse and illiterate, Villa is humbled before him and agrees. He is also drawn to Don Felipe's sister Teresa, though many women are in his life, including his wife Rosita, and an American reporter, Johnny Sykes, turns his exploits into colorful newspaper copy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Viva Villa! (1934)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Lee Tracy was cast as the reporter Johnny Sykes, but after he urinated on military cadets from a Mexican balcony during a parade, he was fired from the film and replaced by Stuart Erwin.
- While Viva Villa! was in production, the Mexican press called it "derogatory to Mexico" and urged that the film be boycotted in Mexico.
- Script problems on Viva Villa! forced a change of as many as three writers and two directors, among them William Wellman and Howard Hawks, both uncredited.
- Viva Villa! partially inspired Elia Kazan's 1952 film Viva Zapata!, which was written by John Steinbeck and starred Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn.
