Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

CLOSE UP 251 every shot of the Mayan funeral in ancient Yucatan, a ceremony which Eisenstein depicted exactly as it was done thousands of years ago. To a university professor who requested to see these scenes, Lesser denied permission, on the grounds that the scenes were extremely tiresome and dull. This was his comment on one of the finest spectacles ever projected in the cinema, rivalling the greatest moments of Griffith's Intolerance. IV. The present prologue is a complete and thoroughgoing distortion of Eisenstein's original prologue. In fact, we do not hesitate to say, even further, that the Sinclair-Lesser prologue to Thunder Over Mexico has nothing in common with Eisenstein's original prologue. In place of " glimpses of the ancient Mexican civilization," Eisenstein had planned a resplendent and epic re-creation, a vast synthetic image, of the Mayan, Aztec and Toltec cultures. The Spanish influences, which came ages later, were not intended to be incorporated in the prologue. According to the scenario, the authentic prologue was not only to conjure up a mighty and melancholy image of the past, but also to establish, for the first time, the " death-theme " underscoring the picture. V. The images of the Mexican conception of death, beginning with the Mayan funeral (the original prologue), were intended by Eisenstein as a refrain throughout the entire film. The death-idea was to be worked into the general pattern of the picture between the episodes. Since the principal episodes have been eliminated, and since the general conception of the film has been hopelessly perverted, the death-idea has also been scrapped. No hint of it appears in Mr. Sinclair's Thunder Over Mexico. VI. The shots of the " Festival " on the hacienda (Thunder Over Mexico) were never intended for that episode. They were " cut in " by the editors of Eisenstein's film from the special material which Eisenstein took, dealing with the Festival of the Virgin of Guaduloupe. In their present form, they are historically and sociologically inaccurate. Apart from every other blunder committed, the false placement of these shots robs Eisenstein's material of its cultural and ethnic authenticity. VII. The montage of the entire film, Thunder Over Mexico, if the present " editing " can be dignified by the term " montage," is a consummate proof that this version has NOT been edited " in accord with Eisenstein's ideas." Nothing could be further from Eisenstein's ideas than the miserable offering (truly a " bastard child ") which Messrs. Sinclair & Lesser are endeavouring to sell to the public under the title Thunder Over Mexico. We therefore unhesitatingly pronounce Thunder Over Mexico a cinematic fraud and we publicly deny that it represents Eisenstein's ideas in any manner, shape or form, from whatever angle viewed — cinematic, political or cultural. VIII. The campaign waged by Experimental Cinema to save QUE VIVA MEXICO ! has been, and will continue to be, an educational campaign, — the first of its kind in the history of the cinema. Its sole purpose is to enlighten the world with respect to the contents, meaning and form of Eisenstein's original conception of Mexico in the hope that such enlightenment may indirectly result in the restoration of the 200,000 feet of negative to their proper owner — Eisenstein. On the other hand, against Thunder Over Mexico, a