Nearly twenty years before Marlon Brando gave us Zapata, there was this alternate view of the hero behind the Mexican revolution, Pancho Villa -- an outlaw who took to the hills as a child after murdering the soldier who whipped his father to death. It's a highly fictionalised version of Mexican history, but pretty enjoyable nevertheless, and Wallace Beery has one of his best roles as the brawny but slightly dim Villa. Most of the characters Beery played throughout his long and occasionally puzzlingly illustrious career were something of a brute and Villa is no different in conception; yet we have some sympathy for his simple approach to complex problems. Having helped to establish the presidency for Francisco Manero (in fact it was Villa in the north and Zapata in the south), he is exiled for his banditry. When Manero is murdered by a turncoat general for attempting to return the land to the peons, Villa takes up arms again and briefly becomes a singularly inept President. For example his answer to the budgetary crisis is to order millions of worthless notes to be printed without even having the hard currency to pay the printers.
Beery apart, it is a fairly minor cast with only Leo Carillo as his equally stupid and murderous sidekick, Fay Wray (again) as a disappointed aristo, and Joseph Schildkraut as the traitorous general making much of an impression. An important character is the American reporter that befriends Villa, played not terribly well by Stuart Erwin, who provides the dying Villa with some would-be famous last words; when he says that he will report that the hero did what he did for love of his country and that he should be forgiven his sins, with his last breath Villa asks what he did wrong -- single-minded yet somewhat unaware to the end.
The reporter was originally played by Lee Tracy (apparently a notorious drunk) and the film begun by director Howard Hawks, but after an incident when Tracy purportedly urinated on Mexican soldiers from his hotel balcony, he had to be smuggled back to the States. Hawks stood by the actor and was also replaced mid-movie by Jack Conway and the change in shooting style is evident. This was but one of several incidents that dogged the production, but we are still left with an interesting oddity which somehow got Oscar nods as best picture and best script.
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