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"..The film portrays, quite brilliantly,
the nature of a guerrilla uprising.
Walker seems all too aware of the
danger of a popular uprising, when he
cautions the white rulers that "the
guerrilla has nothing to lose." And that
in killing a hero of the people, the hero
"becomes a martyr, and the martyr
becomes a myth." " Amazon Review
�An amazing film. . . No one, with
the possible exception of Eisenstein,
has ever before attempted a political
interpretation of history on this epic
scale.� � Pauline Kael
'Queimada': Revolution In Perpetual
Motion - as long as there are
empires, there will be wars -
"Pontecorvo was an expert on the
subject of revolution, possibly even the
poet laureate of violent change. An
Italian communist, he wore his biases
plainly on his sleeve and didn't let
them prevent him from reaching
greatness, as he did in 1965 in "The
Battle of Algiers," a movie so pungent
in its realities that the Pentagon
showed it to Special Forces people just
last year... the movie Queimada is most
powerful as argument: It believes in
the permanence of revolution, and it
closes on a shot of the surly, bitter,
seething people of Queimada, and in
their anger it sees a forever of
Life's good comes not from others'
gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from
within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the
Tamils - a Trans State Nation.. wise !."
- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa
500 B.C
One World Unfolding Consciousness Comments Search
Queimada - Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn!
- as long as there are empires, there will be wars -
[DVD available at Amazon.com]
Review by Joan Mellen
Courtesy: Cinema Magazine - Issue:32, Winter 1972-73
"..The film portrays, quite brilliantly, the nature of a guerrilla uprising. Walker seems
all too aware of the danger of a popular uprising, when he cautions the white rulers
that "the guerrilla has nothing to lose." And that in killing a hero of the people, the
hero "becomes a martyr, and the martyr becomes a myth." " Amazon Review
"... The young boy who guards the captured Dolores stays with him and provides
Pontecorvo with a means of allowing Jose Dolores to give his ideas expression through
dialogue. Jose Dolores does not assail his captor; he tries to inspire and convert him.
He tells the young man that he does not wish to be released because this would only
indicate that it was convenient for his enemy. What serves his enemies is harmful to
him. "Freedom is not something a man can give you," he tells the boy. Dolores is
cheered by the soldier's questions because, ironically, in men like the soldier who helps
to put him to death, but who is disturbed and perplexed by Dolores, he sees in
germination the future revolutionaries of Quemada. To enter the path of
consciousness is to follow it to rebellion.....Pontecorvo zooms to Walker as he listens
to Dolores' final message which breaks his silence: "Ingles, remember what you said.
Civilization belongs to whites. But what civilization? Until when?" The stabbing of
Walker on his way to the ship by an angry rebel comes simultaneously with a
repetition of the Algerian cry for freedom. It is followed, accompanied by percussion,
by a pan of inscrutable, angry black faces on the dock. The frame freezes, fixing their
expressions indelibly in our minds.."
Comment by tamilnation.org
"..But imagine it happens: Killinochchi is flattened, Mr P is dead,
LTTE dissolved. Will the Tamil dream of a Tamil Eelam die? Of course
not. It will be revived, and new cycles of violence will occur..."
Conflict Resolution in Tamil Eelam - Sri Lanka: the Norwegian
Initiative- Professor Johan Galtung, February 2007
"Kuttimuni will be sentenced to death today, but tomorrow there will
be thousands of Kuttimunis." Statement by Tamil Leader, Selvarajah
Yogachandran (Kuttimuni) at his trial in the Colombo High Court,
August 1982
Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn! must surely be one of the most underrated films of
recent years. This can be explained in part by its involved and intricate plot
which, on first viewing, is difficult to follow.
Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) soldier of fortune, adventurer and an envoy
of the British Crown is sent during the 1840's to an island named Quemada. The
island was originally burned to cinder in the scorched earth conquest by the
Portuguese who claimed it as a colony- hence the name "Quemada" which means
"burnt."
violence. This is the way it will go, he
seems to be saying, and it doesn't seem
that he got that one wrong, unless
peace broke out in the past five
minutes. It's brilliantly constructed to
argue what might be called the classic
imperial paradox: To win this war you
must make inevitable the next. The
corollary is that as long as there are
empires, there will be wars. "
Walker's mission is to foment a revolution against Portugal among the oppressed
peasantry with a view to replacing Portuguese control with that of Great Britain.
He arms a peasant named Jose Dolores whom he first tests for daring and
bitterness. With a small band of followers, Dolores, guided by Walker, robs the
Bank of Portugal of its gold and goes on to lead the struggle against the
Portuguese. After victory, Dolores discovers that the new ruler of the island will
be not himself, but a local bourgeois named Teddy Sanchez.

Queimada (1969)

Queimada - Trivia The film's original

title was Quemada (the Spanish word
for "burnt", as the action took place in
a Spanish colony. When the Spanish
government officially complained and
threatened a boycott of the film
(objecting to the script's supposedly
anti-Spanish bias, Gillo Pontecorvo
agreed to alter the setting to a
Portuguese island and the release title
became Queimada ("burnt" in
Portuguese).

Sir William Walker, a real historical

figure portrayed in the film by Marlon
Brando, was neither British nor
knighted. Walker was an American
adventurer and his title of "sir" was
one he adopted on his own.

'Evaristo Marquez' , who plays rebel

leader Jose Dolores in the film, was
not an actor. He was a poor villager
whom director Pontecorvo discovered
while scouting locations and convinced
to star opposite Brando. The studio had
originally wanted Sydney Poitier.

Marlon Brando once said this film

contains "the best acting I've ever
done"

Queimada - Amy Taubin Marlon Brando as Sir William Walker

" Burn! was a courageous film for
Pontecorvo to make. There are few
films as passionate or as
uncompromising about the real
workings and nature of imperialism as
a world order, nor a film which
identifies so feelingly with the victims
of neo-colonial rule. Not since
Eisenstein has a film so explicitly and
with such artistry sounded a paen to
the glory and moral necessity of
revolution. Even had United Artists not
attempted to sabotage Burn!, it would
be a film deserving wider viewing and
critical attention. " Joan Mellen
Walker, having provoked peasant revolt to remove Portugal, has organized the
settler bourgeoisie, warning them that the peasants will go beyond independence,
demanding economic and political control to effect social equality. The settlers
are used by Britain to protect British investment and her access to Quemada's
resources.
"Independence" is translated into replacement of Portugal by a small settler ruling
class militarily supported by Britain. For the peasants, one master replaces
another. Their misery and powerlessness continue. It is a prefiguring of today's
neo-colonial pattern.
Dolores is outraged by this cynical denial to him of the fruits of struggle and he
assumes the throne of the former Portuguese Viceroy by force. But he discovers
that although he possesses momentary power, he lacks the means to feed his
people or to sell the sugar. There is no knowledge of world trade or alternative
markets. Teachers and technicians do not exist. In short, his people are without
the very accoutrements of that civilization which oppressed them in the first
place.

Unable to see a way out and with sugar rotting and piling up on the docks,
Dolores steps down reluctantly, allowing Sanchez to take control. But the settler
commander General Prada is quicker than Sanchez in realizing that Quemada can
be kept open to foreign investment and bourgeois rule rendered secure only if the
rebels are suppressed and permanently disarmed.

Ten years pass. Walker, lacking apparent purpose in life, is now dissolute and
living on the margins of English society. Jose Dolores again leads his starving
people in a new rebellion aimed directly at the landed settler rulers. This threatens
the entire structure of British economic control with implications reaching further
than Quemada. Such a revolt, if successful, would spread through the Caribbean
and beyond.

The British turn again to Walker, hoping to exploit both his knowledge of the
peasant movement and his old relationship with Dolores. He is asked to return to
Quemada and put down the rebellion. Walker accepts.

He attempts to contact Dolores, thinking to trade upon their old association, but it
is this very past which has opened the eyes of Dolores to Walker, whom he
spurns.

Now openly the professional mercenary, Walker pursues Dolores ruthlessly,

burning half the island while uprooting and killing people, animals and vegetation
in his path. He develops a theory that the guerrillas can be defeated only if the
peasants among whom they take shelter and who supply them are burnt and
driven out of all their villages. The vegetation and trees must be denuded since
they too hide the rebels. The logic of defeating a popular movement is inexorably
genocidal, entailing total devastation.

Dolores is finally captured and hanged, refusing Walker's "offer" to escape.

Dolores has learned that freedom must be seized in struggle. And he knows the
offer to free him is designed to demonstrate his subordination. He also realizes
that Walker, having smashed the rebellion, wants to avoid creating a martyr and a
legend. Dolores, in cool defiance, prefers death as his fulfilment.

Walker is personally undermined by this stark contrast between Dolores'

satisfaction in moral conviction and his own emptiness, which he only now fully
registers. The taste of victory is bitter.

His business finished, Walker is stabbed to death on the dock by a porter a

moment before embarking. Quemada's people are awakened, emboldened, and
irreconcilable. The camera pans to many worn faces, their rebellion unchecked
and the example of Dolores burned into their consciousness.

The political aspirations of Burn! are ambitious. Unlike The Battle of Algiers,
Pontecorvo's earlier film, which takes the easier target of colonialism and the
desire for independence, without examination of social formations or the political
consciousness of the F.L.N., Burn! recognizes that direct colonial rule is but one
form of control.

Without goals that go beyond mere physical absence of the colonizer's army,
economic and social exploitation will be maintained for alien interests by
intermediaries, independent in name alone. Neo colonialism is shown a far more
invidious and clever enemy.

The powerful evocation of the dynamics of America's practice in Vietnam, with

its graphic depiction of "Vietnamization," must surely be a major reason for the
critical skittishness towards Burns! in this country.

Pontecorvo has Walker make his next stop Indochina on first leaving Quemada, a
piece of historical impressionism, since France and not England occupied
Indochina in the 1840's. It is a bitter irony when his friend Jose Dolores, not yet
awakened to betrayal, innocently offers Walker a toast "to Indochina."

United Artists, as Pauline Kael put it, "dumped" the film without advance
publicity and screenings. They made Pontecorvo change the occupier from Spain
to Portugal, presumably because the Spanish market for all United Artists films
was in jeopardy.

They made the English title of the film the absurdly imperative "Burn!" rather
than the appropriate translation, "Burnt," which states the inexorable fact, thus
implying the film's endorsement of the tragedy it depicts.

Involved too is the crass sensationalism of invoking "burn, baby, burn" of ghetto
insurrections. This, aimed at the black market, inverts the film's meaning, for
Portugal and Britain burned Quemada, not the victimized populace, who would
never call for the "burning" of their own homes.

Burn! may have been buried because United Artists doubted the film would do
well, but the distributor willed its unhappy fate. They were disturbed by the
incendiary nature of a subject with which they did not care to be closely
identified.

If Portugal and England were safer destroyers for United Artists, the film's
relentless association of racism (the condescending attitude of Walker toward Jose
Dolores throughout) with imperialism brought the theme even closer to home.
The Battle of Algiers, despite its acclaim, had already suffered a distribution and
publicity blackout in the United States, and Burn! goes deeper and farther.

Here, far more than in Algiers, Pontecorvo explores Fanon's theme that through
long delayed and liberating violence the oppressed are returned to self-respect and
adulthood. After attacking their first detachment of Portuguese soldiers, Dolores
and his people burst into an orgy of dance and song that lasts far into the
celebrating night. After generations of passivity before abuse, they emerge as
autonomous people. It is entirely possible that there are circumstances in which a
company like United Artists might even be prepared to lose money!

What makes Burn! more interesting than The Battle of Algiers is that it raises
those questions which Algiers, in its more pristine detachment, evades.

The problem of what happens when a revolutionary organization takes power in

an over-exploited country is hinted at in Algiers when Ben M'Hidi advises Ali La
Pointe:

"It's difficult to start a revolution, more difficult to sustain it, still

more difficult to win it," but it is after the revolution that "the real
difficulties begin."

Burn! takes on this challenging theme. One of the film's most subtle insights is
that colonialism so succeeds in damaging its victims that should they take power,
they have in advance been deprived of the means of exercising it.

"Who will run your industries, handle your commerce, govern your island, cure
the sick, teach in your schools?" Walker asks Jose Dolores, confident of his
superior position. "That man or this one?" he continues, pointing contemptuously
to the bodyguards of Dolores who stand helplessly before him. "Civilization is not
a simple matter. You can't learn its secrets overnight."

Burn! is an intensely romantic movie, a seeming contradiction given the

relentlessness of its politics. It opposes "Western Civilization" (an evil because it
has been racist and exploitative) to the purity of its victims, who can see nothing
of value in a civilization which forever holds them down.

But the sugar cane cutters are the true creators of the civilization which they reject
as "white." "We," declares Jose Dolores to Walker, "are the ones who cut the
cane." The labor which has led to great wealth is subsequently denied its
producers. That it could not exist without them slowly dawns upon Dolores as a
transforming discovery. From this flows confidence and single mindedness.
Pontecorvo unfortunately makes a facile identification between liberation for
Quemada's slave descendants and a rejection of "white civilization."

Because the vast wealth exacted by colonial countries from the labor of their
victims has given rise to a flourishing culture, it does not follow that the arts,
sciences and technology made possible are themselves hateful. The fact that white
Europeans are associated with this civilization accounts for the racism of the
Europeans, who must denigrate those from whom they plunder, but it does not
validate a racism in inverted form.

This is what Pontecorvo unwittingly does when he allows Dolores to prophesy

not merely the end of an order which depends upon exploitation, but also the
culture which it has spawned. Since all culture has similar origins, the sentiment
casts the advocate of emancipation in the role of destroyer.

But the burden of the film is to present Dolores and his people as the carriers of a
different society, one which would end exploitation and create a corresponding
culture. It is clear that the accumulation of capital, which permits technical
development and a culture requiring leisure, draws upon this labor. The social
basis of Western Civilization, certainly in its industrial and technological phase, is
traced in Burn! to its brutal source.

The last words of Jose Dolores are meant to taunt Walker with his obsolescence:
"Civilization belongs to whites. But what civilization? Until when?"

The words fall short, although they gain power as the last statement of a man
giving his life to his deepest convictions. Because the film raises this idea without
exploring it, the source of the projected new civilization remains obscure - as it
must - for it is surely destined to take the best of bourgeois culture as a point of
departure rather than retreat, if it is to be a culture transcending the subjugation of
one class by another.

Pontecorvo has said that "the third world must produce its own civilization and
one of the weaknesses of the third world today is that its culture is not a new
product which has rid itself of white culture, but is a derivation of this culture.'"
But an emergent people will take what is useful to them and build from there. In
any event, no culture is a new product. Such a view is hardly historical, let alone
Marxist.

And, Pontecorvo, after all, in describing the struggle of Jose Dolores, projects not
a "new" ideology but that of Marx, who was both European and a product of
European capitalism and civilization. "Between one historical period and
another," says Sir William, readying himself for battle against Dolores and the
rebels, "ten years may be enough to reveal the contradictions of a century."

Pontecorvo applies the words of Marx, as well he might, since a new ideology is
not required. Nor does Pontecorvo care that Walker uses Marxist terminology and
categories before the Communist Manifesto was written!

Why then does he, speaking through his characters, offer in the film a blanket
condemnation of all the ideas, values and philosophies to appear in Europe since
the Greeks? "If what we have in our country is civilization," says one of the
rebels, "we don't want it." Yet in the next breath his ideas are those of Marx and
Engels: "If a man works for another, even if he's called a worker, he will remain a
slave."

These contradictions permeate the film and engender not only a certain feeling of
anachronism, but a lack of intellectual clarity, especially disturbing in a film
which aims to enlarge our understanding of the nature of neo-colonialism and its
relation to culture. There are other undeveloped aspects of the film.

In the service of Britain, Sir William Walker is ready to kill Jose Dolores when he
threatens British privileges and interests. But Walker feels deep affection for the
rebel leader who has played Galatea to his Pygmalion. Indeed his fondness for
Dolores is almost as obsessive as his later quest to capture him, and, at the end,
Walker is shattered by Dolores' contempt. This is one of the most potentially
illuminating and subtle themes in the film.

Walker's fascination with the vitality and innocence of Dolores is in counterpoint

to his frenzy when he is rejected, even as the colonizers want the love and
approval of those they oppress at the same time as they would destroy them for
exposing the perpetrators to themselves.

This allows psychological verisimilitude to Walker when he returns to Quemada

as a ruthless warlord who will burn every blade of grass to prevent Dolores'
rebellious ideas from spreading to other colonies and islands where Royal Sugar
maintains interests.

A major weakness, however, is that this ambiguity of response is evident in

Brando's performance, but inadequately developed in the film. The problem is
that the face of Brando easily conveys irony and nuance. He is at his best when a
situation is ambiguous.

But the film seems to deny ambiguity when we are expected to believe that
Walker, without self-examination, will renounce all humanity in the service of an
absent master- for pay so meagre it is not enough even to be called "gain."

Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) meets the porter Jose Dolores (Evaristo
Marquez)

Psychological motivation required more careful delineation. As it stands, in the

middle of the film Brando, is unable to carry the degeneration of Walker when he
has become a brawling drunkard. The action and melodrama, no matter how
many fires are set, is too weak to conceal the hiatus between one aspect of the
characterization, the external, and the other, the inner life of Walker.

The bridge of a psychological relationship between Walker and Dolores,

oppressor and oppressed, is not constructed. Pontecorvo is himself too facile in
accounting for Walker's transformation:

"Walker changed because he discovered that there was nothing behind the side he
helped... Men like Walker, full of vitality and action, then change the direction of
this vitality. They go to sea, buy a boat, drink, beat people up. They don't believe
in anything.'"

This is meant to explain why Walker returns to work for Royal Sugar to rid the
island of its rebels, i.e. to a man empty of values one side is not perceptibly
different from another. But this reduces Walker to a cardboard figure, and Brando
is uncomfortable with the conception, imparting to his Walker that very
psychological nuance which the film itself does not consistently fulfill.

Hence we miss in Burn!, until the very end, that moment of self-confrontation and
discovery in which Walker registers his emptiness and becomes ready to do
anything.

We have instead his departure to "Indochina" in one sequence and the sight of a
slovenly Brando in the next. There is almost a suggestion here that Pontecorvo
fears that moments of psychological insight in a film involve indulgence, a resort
to what vulgar Marxists might call "bourgeois individualism."

More the pity, because the spectacle of personal damage drawn upon and inflicted
by imperialism upon its own adherents could only have made more rich the
portrait of deterioration in so bold and talented man as Walker. Given the
enormous resource Pontecorvo had in Brando, he neglected an important
opportunity to create a character at once more powerful and tragic for being able
to see more deeply into himself.

As in Algiers, Pontecorvo used primarily non-professional actors in Burn!

Besides Brando, the only professional was Rento Salvatori who plays the social
democratic leader Teddy Sanchez, an easy tool who is eliminated when he
perceived: "if there had not been a Royal Sugar, there might not have been a Jose
Dolores."

General Prada was played with wit and aplomb by a lawyer, the President of
Caritas in Colombia. Mr. Shelton, the representative of Royal Sugar who
accompanies Walker during the last half of the film, was performed by the
administrator for British Petroleum in Colombia. He played himself-convincingly
and with ease. Only in Evaristo Marquez (Jose Dolores) was Pontecorvo unlucky.

"...the native population scrounges for a living on the waterfront. It is here that
Walker meets Jose Dolores, a porter who has learned that the only way to survive in
a white man's world is to ingratiate yourself with foreigners."

In Algiers, Brahim Haggiag, an illiterate peasant who knew nothing of movies,

was metamorphosed into Ali La Pointe in every gesture and expression. Marquez
was also an illiterate peasant who had never seen a movie when Pontecorvo met
him. He was chosen without a screen test because his face so well suited
Pontecorvo's conception of the character. But here the attempt failed. Pontecorvo
found that Marquez could not turn or move on cue. A script girl had to tap his leg
to remind him of his next movement.
His part had to be played over and over in the evenings by Pontecorvo and
Salvatori. Brando, out of the frame, would mime the facile gesture for Marquez
who was on camera, while Pontecorvo shot over Brando's shoulder. Although
Pontecorvo argues that after ten days Marquez improved dramatically, the film is
marred by the unevenness of his movements and the unsureness with which he
speaks.

At one point during the shooting, when Dolores was being coached in a
completely mechanical way, Brando quipped, "If you are successful with this
scene, I know someone who will turn over in his grave-Stanislavsky."

Unfortunately for Pontecorvo, Stanislavsky's rest was not disturbed. It is not even
clear from his performance if Jose Dolores understands what the film represents
as his ideas.

In the course of Burn! Dolores must mature- from a man without consciousness
of his condition, completely unaware of the nature of his enemy, to a seasoned
leader who knows exactly "where he's going," even if he's not always sure of
"how to get there." He is to emerge as a mass leader. But with Dolores, and
sometimes with Walker, motives and feelings are too often presented in long shot.
We do not in fact see what we are told is before us.

Despite these weaknesses, Burn! is a beautiful film. It shares many of the

strengths of Algiers, but its historical scope is far wider than the bare theme of
independence from an oppressor long condemned by history as obsolete. A
remarkable feature of Burn! is its truly cinematic style.

Pontecorvo interweaves his two great preoccupations, music (and sound in

general) with the imagery created by a constantly moving camera. The result is
not a tract against neo-colonialism, but a ballet in which the dancers perform in
accordance with a scenario predestined by the exigencies of a historical
determinism.

During the course of Burn! the visual style is altered with the changing fortunes
of Jose Dolores. Walker's arrival in the first sequence is on a "painted ship upon a
painted ocean." Birds chatter peacefully overhead and the camera pans a lush,
green island. His second arrival, when his mission is to exterminate Jose Dolores
and the revolutionaries, is in fog and mist, "under a cloud."

The terrain of the last scenes of the film contrasts sharply with the first. All color
has been bleached out. The sky is not blue, but white. The birds fly up to the sky
to escape the smoke. Vultures predominate as the screen is filled with bodies and
there are only blackened, charred trees. Pontecorvo demands of his camera that it
find visual equivalents for the emotions of his people.

" 'Between one historical period and another,' says Sir William, readying himself
for battle against Dolores and the rebels, 'ten years may be enough to reveal the
contradictions of a century.' "

But beyond cinematography, Pontecorvo uses sound, and frequently music, to

convey the themes of his films. He admits to whistling projected musical themes
on the set during shooting to govern his pacing, to determine how long to stay
with a shot or on a face and when to cut away. Burn! begins with a gunshot
heralding the titles which force their way onto a screen fragmented with stills
from the film, one giving way to the next, in a violence accentuated by red
background and music. The effect is of a film demanding that its message be seen
and heard.

The central musical motif of the film, that associated with Jose Dolores, begins
when the captain of Walker's ship points out to him an island in the harbor where
the bones of slaves who died en route to Quemada are said to have been thrown.
The music thus is interested not in Jose Dolores as an individual alone (he has yet
to appear), but as a symbol of his suffering people. In the same way Walker, who
shows Dolores' executioners how to tie the noose, ("See Paco," says the man,
"this is how they do it.") personifies a vicious culture, a role that will supersede
his impulse of affection and sympathy for Dolores.

Sound and image parallel each other as the thud of the plank lowered for the
passengers to disembark is followed by a quick zoom back for a larger view of
the wharves of Quemada. Creoles await the ship in eager anticipation, while the
native population scrounges for a living on the waterfront.

It is here that Walker meets Jose Dolores, a porter who has learned that the only
way to survive in a white man's world is to ingratiate himself with foreigners:
"Your bags, Senor," are his "smiling" first words. With a hand- held camera
Pontecorvo takes us on a tour of the market place of Quemada, teeming with life,
its bustle to be broken shortly by the arrival of a gang of black slaves in chains.

"Walker changed because there was nothing behind the side he helped... Men like
Walker, full of vitality and action, then change the direction of this vitality. They go
to sea, buy a boat, drink, beat people up. They don't believe in anything."

Pontecorvo uses the zoom even more frequently here than he did in Algiers, and
often for the same reason, as a means of conveying a rapidly changing state of
consciousness in a character. There is a zoom to Brando's eyes as he looks
through the bars of the windows at the funeral of the dead revolutionary,
Santiago, who, had he lived, might have helped him in his plan to overthrow
Portugal.

The technique is also used with Jose Dolores as he lifts a stone against a
Portuguese soldier mistreating a female slave. To emphasize the moment in which
Walker sees Jose Dolores as a successor to the dead Santiago, Pontecorvo freezes
the frame. With Pontecorvo the freeze frame is used as an equivalent to musical
punctuation. Just as a musical theme can begin and then cease, only to start up
again later, completing the motif, the freeze frame can punctuate the visuals. At
this moment in the film the identity of Jose Dolores, and his future, have been
sealed by his act of attempted rebellion.
Equally, Pontecorvo attempts to use editing as a means of thematic expression. He
cuts from the bereaved wife of Santiago to a vulture against the sky, as she carries
the body of her decapitated husband home. The vulture evokes the rapacity of
those who exploit the people of Quemada and who murdered Santiago.
Pontecorvo's editing style permits him a good deal of foreshortening, especially
useful in a film with so complex a plot.

Walker teaches Jose Dolores and his men how to use a weapon, concluding the
lesson with the words, "the rifle is ready." The rapid cut, accompanied by
percussion, is to a pan of the dead bodies of the Portuguese soldiers who have
been killed as a result. Pontecorvo very frequently uses percussion, as in Algiers,
as a means of heightening tension and emphasizing the crucial nature of an action.

For his close-ups Pontecorvo generally relies upon the eyes of his people. He
chooses actors frequently on the basis of the intensity and expressiveness of this
feature. The close-up of the eyes of Jose Dolores as he is about to attack Walker,
who has just tested his metal by calling his mother a whore, immediately conveys
his fury. Close-ups emphasize the tearful eyes of the children of Santiago helping
their mother to remove the body. They become the tears of all those who have
been made to suffer meaninglessly.

" 'Who will run your industries, handle your commerce, govern your island, cure
the sick, teach in the schools?' Walker asks Jose Dolores, confident of his superior
position.. -'Civilization is not a simple matter. You can't learn its secrets overnight.'
"

Such moments are contrasted with those in which Pontecorvo, using percussion,
emphasizes the vitality and life force in the oppressed which emerges when they
actively take part in wresting their freedom. After the killing of the Portuguese
soldiers, Jose Dolores and the men and women who have helped him break into a
dance. In his throat Jose Dolores echoes the shrill cry of the Algerian women
when they urged their men to avenge the bombing of the Casbah.

Reminding us of the earlier film, this scream from Dolores unites his struggle
with that in Algeria. It also provides Pontecorvo with another opportunity to show
that for people in underdeveloped countries faced with colonialism and later, neo-
colonialism, the task is the same. The process of self-liberation follows a similar
pattern. Jose Dolores dances with a baby in his arms, a frequent symbol with
Pontecorvo, expressing his sense that the pain to be endured by Jose Dolores will
be unmediated by success; it will be for future generations, who must continue his
struggle, to achieve the final victory.

The defeat of the Portuguese in the film occurs all too quickly. It is rather
inexplicable that a military (and naval) power like Portugal could be banished
from Quemada with so little struggle or attempt at reinforcement. On the night of
a carnival, the camera zooms in on the Portuguese governor about to be
assassinated, ostensibly by Teddy Sanchez, but actually by Walker, whose role is
epitomized as he holds the unsteady arm of his co-conspirator.

Pushed out onto the balcony to face the people, Teddy Sanchez utters a whispered
"freedom," displaying the timidity of his class faced with mass insurrection. A
waving flag of Portugal appears mysteriously, providing the shot with rhythm and
color- and Sanchez with the opportunity to tear it down. This action gives him his
voice as well. As he now yells for "freedom!" the drums begin, expressing the
restoration to life that liberation grants the people of Quemada.

The sympathy of the director for Jose Dolores is revealed most clearly in the
music, resounding like a Gregorian Chant and sung by a black chorus, which
accompanies Dolores and his army along the beach into the city. Because the
music is so flamboyant, Pontecorvo begins with an extreme long shot of Dolores
and his people, some walking, some on tired old horses, most in tatters, and all in
absolute silence.

Only when they are more nearly within our visual range do we hear the first notes
of the organ which introduces the composition. The effect of this music is
extremely powerful, if romantic. It succeeds, however, in rendering Jose Dolores
a beatific figure, possessed in his devotion of more than human virtue.

To reinforce this transcendent quality of his hero, Pontecorvo has a crowd of

women and children from the town run along the beach greeting Dolores. The
scene is done in silence with music alone, recorded, interestingly, by Pontecorvo
in Morocco. It sets off the more grandiose music of the earlier moment. Smiling
women with tears streaming down their cheeks reach out for Dolores, as if they
were touching a god. Shots of arms, hands, parts of bodies, children, reinforce the
motif of an enormous collective force converging like a wave in the struggle
against exploitation.

"The logic of defeating the enemy is inexorably genocidal, entailing total

devastation."

Pontecorvo also relies upon reaction shots to indicate the political point of view
of the film. Jose Dolores' face changes effectively (and here Marquez seems quite
adequate) when he learns that Sanchez has been made President of the Provisional
Government.

But the best reaction shot in the film occurs later, when a troop of British soldiers,
complete with Red Coats, disembarks from the ship that has brought them to
destroy the guerrillas. A baby-faced young soldier, marching proudly along,
perhaps on his first assignment, smiles when he sees all the beautiful, richly
dressed women who have come to offer welcome. His smile is slowly dissolved
to an expression of extreme fear as he sees the cold fury in the eyes of the men of
Quemada - also watching the scene on the wharf.
The shot of the arrival of the British Army, marching through a crowd of waving
handkerchiefs and cheers, parallels very closely the appearance of Mathieu and
his paratroopers in Algiers. Both scenes establish that imperialism will use all the
force and technology at its disposal to crush a rebellion aimed at removing its
economic domination of impoverished lands.

Because it reminds us so much of Algiers, the scene in Burn! serves again to

reiterate Pontecorvo's view that the struggle of all these peoples is fundamentally
the same. Their enemy always behaves in comparable ways because the objective
of domination compels essentially similar stratagems and values.

Jose Dolores survives in power but a short time. The insuperable quality of the
obstacles facing him is shown by the tracking camera moving through the chaotic
palace rooms filled with debris, men sleeping on the floor, a howling dog, and
general disorder.

Dolores returns to the encampment of his people while the musical motif which
has been associated with him is played, this time with pathos. The scene is a
tableau vivant; the people reach out to him as they did on the beach. He smiles,
but in his heart he knows that their freedom, for now, will be short-lived. The
motif is again played with sadness when later, in a flashback, the rebel army is
shown throwing down its guns.

Pontecorvo attempts to use music alone to convey the reason for Walker's return
to Quemada. During a dissolute ten years, Walker had left the British Navy to
inhabit slums. He no longer lives in keeping with the values and style of his class.
The scenes which take place in England look as if they were filmed at the
Cinecitta Studios outside of Rome. They are unrealistic to an extreme, puffed
with atmosphere and fog, like Dickens seen through the eyes of Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm.

The credibility of the entire sequence is saved only by the mobility of Brando's
face when he is told by the emissaries of the Royal Sugar Company, now de facto
ruler in Quemada, that he is needed. Walker scorns the offer until he is informed
that it has something to do with "sugar cane." His face immediately changes as he
remembers his days with Dolores. Accompanying his wistful and pained
expression is the musical motif that we have associated with Jose Dolores and
which represents all that is cherished in the film.

It is with this that Walker identifies and which possesses him. And it is here, in
failing to develop the personal workings of his attachment, that the film appears
arbitrary. Suddenly, in the next sequences Walker becomes a hardened mercenary
who does whatever is necessary to preserve the holdings of a ruthless and self-
serving sugar company, not caring what he must do as long as he "does it well."

We are presented a second time through the music with Walker's ambiguity. And
again music alone cannot carry an entire psychology of character. On his return
Walker sends a message asking Dolores to meet him for a discussion. Dolores'
outraged emissary conveys the request (It will later be answered with the murder
of three soldiers). But before this occurs, Walker, satisfied with himself and
relishing the opportunity to meet his old friend once more, steps outside of his
tent. He asks his sentry why he "isn't in the Sierra Madre with the others." (The
name immediately suggests the " Sierra Maestra" of Cuba and encourages us to
see in Jose Dolores a forerunner of Fidel Castro).

The musical motif of Dolores once more envelops Walker as he walks out to look
at the sunset. It is one of his moments of greatest happiness in the film. The music
poignantly expresses the yearning in Walker, but it undercuts our belief in the
mission Walker carries out so relentlessly, despite his feeling for Dolores. The
element of self-awareness is missing and with it a means of integrating Walker's
ambivalence within a coherent depiction of his psyche.
Pontecorvo uses no dialogue to condemn the soldiers, who must burn all of
Quemada to capture Jose Dolores and his band of guerrillas. It is the music which
judges them as they evacuate the villages. Sometimes sound and image overlap to
increase the sense of irony.

At one point, as people are being herded from their homes, we hear
the words of the next scene: Teddy Sanchez tells a crowd of starving
refugees, "You will know that it is not we who are responsible for
this tragedy, but Jose Dolores."

A moment later a riot develops over the distribution of a cart-load of bread and,
upon orders from General Prada, the people are fired on by the soldiers. A man of
good intentions, the social democrat Teddy Sanchez, who believed all could live
peacefully together under the rule of Royal Sugar as long as "adequate wages"
were paid, is superseded by the more realistic General Prada who has known all
along that Royal Sugar and a contented population were irreconcilables to be
mediated only through the barrel of a gun.

At one point during the evacuations, Pontecorvo tilts to a little boy with his hands
up. The "nota ten uta" or sustained note, accompanying the image was written by
Pontecorvo. He included it in the film, as he says, "superstitiously," since Burn!
was the first of his films in which he did not collaborate on the music because
only two months were available for the editing.

Pontecorvo zooms in on the young soldier who captures Jose Dolores to explain
the willingness of young men in Quemada to fight for Walker. One of Walker's
soldiers declares he hopes Dolores remains uncaptured because as long as Jose
Dolores lives, he has work and good pay. "Isn't it the same for you?" he asks
Walker.

The young boy who guards the captured Dolores stays with him and provides
Pontecorvo with a means of allowing Jose Dolores to give his ideas expression
through dialogue. He does not assail his captor; he tries to inspire and convert
him. He tells the young man that he does not wish to be released because this
would only indicate that it was convenient for his enemy. What serves his
enemies is harmful to him. "Freedom is not something a man can give you," he
tells the boy. Dolores is cheered by the soldier's questions because, ironically, in
men like the soldier who helps to put him to death, but who is disturbed and
perplexed by Dolores, he sees in germination the future revolutionaries of
Quemada. To enter the path of consciousness is to follow it to rebellion.

General Prada is persuaded by Walker that Dolores induced to supplicate for

freedom would serve their purposes better than the creation of a martyr, his spirit
dangerously wandering the Antilles. Walker, his ambivalence surfacing, does not
want the blood of Dolores on his hands. The scene in which Prada makes his offer
to Dolores is especially well done. It occurs three-quarters off stage.

We wait with Walker for the news, but all we hear are the muffled words "Africa"
and "money," accompanied by a loud laugh from Dolores which chills us, as it
must Walker. The episode is not shown because the film, in its admiration for
Dolores, has rendered the plan absurd from the start. Nor is the defeated Walker
shown at the end of the scene, although we hear his words, "I'm going to bed."
 "Walker is personally undermined by this stark contrast between Dolores'
satisfaction in moral conviction and his own emptiness, which he only now fully
registers. The taste of victory is bitter."

The last interview between Walker and Dolores is powerful. Walker desperately
wishes to set Dolores free. Dolores refuses to speak to him. The camera focuses
on the face of Brando who, having been superseded in his superiority and moral
strength by Dolores as a mature revolutionary, cannot understand why a man
would give up his life if he has a chance to escape. Dolores has purpose and
meaning in his life. Walker by this time has none and only now is confronted,
looking at the transformed Dolores, by what Pontecorvo has called "his own
emptiness."

Pontecorvo has described the shooting of this scene with great poignancy:

" Walker is desperate when Dolores refuses. He sees his own

emptiness before his eyes. And we stopped one day for this scene
because Brando was afraid. It may appear very strange, but Brando,
because of his sensibility, after years and years of sets, after years and
years of success, is very often afraid of difficult scenes, extremely
afraid. And he is tense and nervous when he is in such a situation. In
this situation he was not able to function. The dialogue was originally
longer... we cut out all the dialogue and I told someone to buy
Cantata 156 of Bach because I knew that it gives the exact movement
of this scene. And I cut all the dialogue. Without saying anything to
Brando, I said, we will shoot now, we have waited too long, we will
try to shoot. I put the music on at the moment when I wanted him to
open his arms and express his sense of emptiness. I put on the music
without telling him. I said only, "Don't say the last part of the
dialogue." He agreed. He was happy to do this; he said it was stupid
to use too much dialogue. From this moment he was so moved by the
music that he did the scene in a marvellous way. When he finished
the scene, the whole crew applauded. It was more effective there than
on the screen later. The sudden tension we obtained was surprising.
And Brando said this was the first time he had seen two pages of
dialogue replaced by music."

Pontecorvo zooms to Walker as he listens to Dolores' final message which breaks

his silence: "Ingles, remember what you said. Civilization belongs to whites. But
what civilization? Until when?"

The stabbing of Walker on his way to the ship by an angry rebel comes
simultaneously with a repetition of the Algerian cry for freedom. It is followed,
accompanied by percussion, by a pan of inscrutable, angry black faces on the
dock. The frame freezes, fixing their expressions indelibly in our minds.
 The music of the end is a religious choral piece. Played over the final moments of
life remaining to Walker who lies in the dust, it becomes at once an apotheosis,
very moving and romantic, as it heralds in victory the fall of the tormentor. The
feeling left with the audience is simultaneously one of horror and vindication,
although the actual murder of Walker occurs long after his moral demise.

Far more than Algiers, with its virtual equation of the vast violence committed by
the French with that of the Algerians, Burn! was a courageous film for
Pontecorvo to make.

There are few films as passionate or as uncompromising about the real workings
and nature of imperialism as a world order, nor a film which identifies so
feelingly with the victims of neo-colonial rule.

Not since Eisenstein has a film so explicitly and with such artistry
sounded a paen to the glory and moral necessity of revolution. Even
had United Artists not attempted to sabotage Burn!, it would be a
film deserving wider viewing and critical attention.

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