¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa!

¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa! ("Let's Go with Pancho Villa!") is a Mexican motion picture filmed in 1936. An antiepic based on a novel, it focuses on the cruelty of the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa himself, contrary to most of the Mexican movies about this national hero. The movie is thought to have been the first Mexican superproduction and led to the bankruptcy of the film company that made it.

Villa was portrayed by Domingo Soler . Directed by Fernando de Fuentes , the film tells the story of a group of friends who hear about the revolution and Villa and decide to join him, only to suffer the cruel reality of war under the command of a Villa who simply does not care about his men.

The movie has two endings: the original ending shows the last surviving friend returning to his home, disenchanted with both Villa and the Revolution. The second ending, discovered many years later, returns to the same scene ten years later, when an old and weakened Villa tries to recruit the last survivor again; following his refusal, Villa kills the whole family except for the youngest son, whom he takes with him. It is unknown whether the second ending was censored by the government or the director simply thought it was unnecessary.

A great failure when released, interest in the movie resurged many decades later, and today is considered one of the best movies of Mexican cinema both for its approach to the theme and its technical merits. It stands apart among the many movies made about Villa in that it portrays the man and the Revolution in its cruelty; most other films, like those by Ismael Rodríguez in the 1960s, take an almost idyllic view of both, following the official (government) mythos.

The movie music was composed by Silvestre Revueltas, who makes a cameo appearance in it.

External link

• Movie review in Spanish