Viva Maria!

UPC: 027616921789

Studio: MGM

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Mild Violence, Adult Situations, Questionable for Children, Adult Humor]

Summary: Two of the most beautiful women in the European cinema of the 1960s -- Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau -- team up under the direction of Louis Malle in this engaging comedy/adventure. Maria Fitzgerald O'Malley (Bardot) is the daughter of an Irish political dissident who has traveled to Latin America with her father to take part in an anarchist political uprising. When her father is killed, Maria, left to her own devices, happens upon a traveling circus, where she strikes up a friendship with one of the performers, also named Maria (Moreau). Maria O'Malley joins up with the carnival, and she works up a dance routine with Maria; the act is a smash hit, especially after the Irish Maria accidentally loses part of her costume during a performance. Despite their success, the two Marias find themselves increasingly distressed with the poverty and brutality of the peasants' lives, and they soon decide to use their talents in support of revolutionary leader Flores (George Hamilton). Viva Maria!'s original ending was trimmed slightly for its American release, but the complete version was later released in the United States on DVD. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Category: Comedy

Awards: Best Foreign Actress – British Academy of Film and Television Arts

Features: [None specified]

Viva Maria!

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 04/05/2005

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: DD1 Dolby Digital Mono, DD2 Dolby Digital Stereo

Runtime: 117 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) French

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1 --
1. Explosive Little Girl [4:08]
2. Main Title [3:06]
3. A Circus at the Circus [3:14]
4. The Hungry & the Lonely [6:02]
5. "Mary and Mary" [2:58]
6. A Showgirl is Born [9:08]
7. Love and Alcohol [8:35]
8. Phenomenon Times Two [7:40]
9. Tall, Dark & Revolutionary [5:47]
10. Caged Beauties [4:08]
11. The Cultured Brute [7:46]
12. The Uprising [6:24]
13. Marie's Big Scene [7:53]
14. Headlong Into... [8:07]
15. ...Full-Blown Revolution [5:22]
16. "Ave Maria... y Maria" [5:56]
17. Trapped by the Church [4:58]
18. Invading San Miguel [8:58]
19. Firing the Squad [3:36]
20. Heroes of the Revolution [2:38]

Nathan Southern

Louis Malle's first officially credited collaboration with the ingenious Jean-Claude Carri?re never sinks below the level of sheer charm and good humor. But as Carri?re affirmed years later in an interview, Viva Maria! suffers slightly from over-length and an overabundance of influences (contemporary feminism, children's European fantasy adventure yarns, tall tales, anticlericalism, cabaret life and music, revolutionary politics). It may be that rare film with too many assets; at 119 minutes, the nonstop barrage of colorful sight gags, bawdy striptease musical numbers, double-entendres, and fervent battle sequences risks exhausting the viewer. Taken one scene at a time (or even one sequence at a time), the film never ceases to delight -- it feels like a two-hour trip to the carnival. But this Cinemascope picture might fare even better in a widescreen home-video format, a mode that will enable the viewer to take frequent breaks. The picture would certainly wear thin with repetition, becoming threadbare and transparent, were it not for an interesting narrative structure that imparts some much-needed depth by comically setting up racial and gender stereotypes before doubling back on itself and turning the tables (narratively) at the hour mark, to advocate the opposite -- racial/sexual equality and political liberation. On this note: decades later, Louis Malle remembered Fassbinder and his fellow students examining the film at Berlin University and reading it as a tract on varying approaches to political revolution -- a level of meaning that the director and his co-writer never consciously intended to impart to the picture! Viva Maria failed to impact stateside viewers upon its 1966 U.S. release, hitting the shores of the Atlantic in a dubbed version that decimated its chances. But its reputation improved considerably over the ensuing decades, and given its recent debut on widescreen DVD and in a retrospective of Louis Malle's films that toured the United States in mid-late 2005, it awaits new generations of admirers. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Adriana Roel  Actor 
Fernando Wagner  Actor 
Jose Baviera  Actor 
Poldo Bendandi  Actor 
Francisco Reiguera  Actor 
Jean-Claude Carrière  Screenwriter 
Oscar Dancigers  Producer 
Georges Delerue  Composer (Music Score) 
Louis Malle  Director 
Louis Malle  Producer 
Louis Malle  Screenwriter 
Brigitte Bardot  Actor 
Jeanne Moreau  Actor 
George Hamilton  Actor 
Claudio Brook  Actor 
Paulette Dubost  Actor 
Gregor Von Rezzori  Actor 
Carlos Lopez Moctezuma  Actor 

Country: France,Italy