The Unfinished Eisensteins: Bezhin Meadow + Que Viva Mexico!

There are two legendary films maudits (literally, “accursed films”) in the great Eisenstein’s filmography: Que Viva Mexico! and Bezhin Meadow, both abandoned before they were completed, and both extant only in re-recreations or reconstructions that make use of Eisenstein’s original footage but can only approximate his original intentions. Here are two well-known versions of these two “lost masterpieces.”

Bezhin Meadow
USSR 1937. Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Cast: Vitya Kartashov, Nikolai Khmelyov, Pavel Ardzhanov, Yekaterina Teleshova, Nikolai Maslov

Experimenting with new visual techniques and, for the first time, with sound, Eisenstein aimed for new artistic heights with the ambitious Bezhin Meadow, his return to Soviet filmmaking after the debacle of his unfinished Que Viva Mexico! project in America. Instead, Bezhin Meadow too remained unfinished: two years into production, the project was halted by the Soviet authorities, and Eisenstein was forced to make a humiliating public admission of his political and artistic “mistakes.” Taking its title from a 19th-century story by Turgenev, but designed to celebrate the Young Pioneers, the official Soviet youth organization, Bezhin Meadows relates a tale, supposedly based on fact, of deadly father-son conflict during the collectivization of Soviet farms. Eisenstein’s original footage is believed destroyed. In the 1960s, clippings from the film, saved from the editing table by Eisenstein’s wife, were discovered and used to fashion this short photo-montage reconstruction, which follows the original shooting script and is set to music by Prokofiev. B&W, 35mm, in Russian with English subtitles. 31 mins.

followed by

Time in the Sun [Que Viva Mexico!]
Mexico/USA 1933/1940. Director: Sergei Eisenstein

Eisenstein’s ill-fated Que Viva Mexico!, one of cinema’s most celebrated lost masterpieces, exists in several unofficial abridgments and reconstructions. One of the most widely seen is this 1940 version, assembled by Eisenstein biographer Mary Seaton, who said it was based on a rough outline provided by Eisenstein himself. The director had come to America in 1930 hoping to make a film in Hollywood. When those plans fell through, he undertook, with financing from novelist Upton Sinclair, a mammoth, extravagant cinematic portrait of Mexico’s rich history, peoples, and traditions. Based on the eternal cycles of birth and death, and inspired by the epic murals of Diego Riviera and other Mexican artists, Que Viva Mexico! was to be structured in six parts, moving in history from pre-Columbian times to contemporary Day of the Dead celebrations. Eisenstein reportedly shot some 50 hours of footage; with expenses and misunderstandings mounting, Sinclair shut down the production. Eisenstein returned to the USSR and never again had access to the footage; Sinclair, the legal owner, parcelled it out to various film projects, including Seaton’s, over the years. Many believe Que Viva Mexico! might have been Eisenstein’s surpassing achievement, if only it had been finished. B&W, 35mm. 55 mins.