Recently watched this film again, hadn’t seen it for some time.
I think you can regard it as a forerunner to the political spaghettis, beginning with A Bullet For The General. I think those films were influenced a great deal by Viva Maria.
It’s really not at all deep in terms of story or political content, it’s mainly a humorous adventure-film. But the Zapata style setting with struggling peons, and a lot of action involving machineguns and explosives, is typical for what was to come later on in many spaghettis.
Brigitte Bardot is a good actress and as beautiful as ever. She plays the daughter of an irish revolutionary, and she ends up with a travelling cirkus in south america. They all then get mixed up in some revolutionary activities.
The region 1 dvd has excellent picture quality, french audio, and english subs.
This one is coming up at the National Film Theatre in June as part of a Jeanne Moreau season. I’ve never seen it. Obviously Lindberg recommends it but has anyone else seen it or know much about it?
I’ll probably go along anyway. I like to go to the NFT at least once a month if I can and it will be a toss up between this or one of David Lean’s classics (maybe Great Expectations).
She does? That’s news to me as I don’t know much about French politics. I don’t have anything against Le Pen so this doesn’t really add to my disliking of Bardot. I just find him stupid, childish, irritating and very unsexy. That I hate all Roger Vadim films I’ve seen doesn’t exactly help… it’s not just because of Bardot, though.
I started to get a bit tired of the dance routines, but then film when into revolution mode which provided the way for some action. The film is fun most of the time, with some strange things on show like a gun that shoots round corners. I was surprised as film has a decent budget, with strong colours on show through all the film.
Updated the page to the new layout. We definitely need a new and concise synposis, who can write one up? Also welcome: corrections, reviews, links, facts, and pictures.
