Viva Zapata!
1952 film by Elia Kazan
Viva Zapata! is a 1952 American biographical Western film directed by Elia Kazan, dramatizing the life of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata from his peasant upbringing through his rise to power in the early 1900s and his death in 1919. It stars Marlon Brando as the title character, and features Jean Peters as his wife Josefa and Anthony Quinn as his brother Eufemio. The screenplay was written by John Steinbeck, using Edgcumb Pinchon's 1941 book Zapata the Unconquerable as a guide.
To make the film as authentic as possible, Kazan and producer Darryl F. Zanuck studied the numerous photographs that were taken during the revolutionary years, the period between 1909 and 1919, when Zapata led the fight to restore land taken from common people during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. Kazan was especially impressed with the Agustín Casasola collection of photographs, and he attempted to duplicate their visual style in the film. Kazan also acknowledged the influence of Roberto Rossellini's Paisan (1946).
The film was released by 20th Century Fox on February 13, 1952. It received generally positive reviews from critics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Anthony Quinn winning for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot
Emiliano Zapata is part of a delegation sent to complain about injustices to corrupt longtime president Porfirio Díaz, but Díaz dismisses their concerns, driving Zapata to open rebellion, along with his brother Eufemio.
“Viva Zapata!” enters the record as 1952 film by Elia Kazan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Viva, Zapata and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q780350. VIAF identifies the subject as 305887072. The Library of Congress control number is n92092447. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1919, 1941 and 1909.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viva Zapata!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.