The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair

by Upton Sinclair

IV

It was also in 1933 that we got involved with Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian film director. He had come to Hollywood two years before to make a picture. Because he would not do what our screen masters wanted, his plans had miscarried, and now he was about to return to Russia. Then, only a few hours before he was supposed to leave, he sent a friend to us with a wonderful idea: if only someone would raise the money, he would go to Mexico and make an independent picture of the primitive Indians about whom Diego Rivera had told him.

We hated to see a great artist humiliated by the forces that had assailed Eisenstein in California; so we very foolishly undertook to raise the money. Mrs. Gartz put up the first five thousand dollars—on condition that Craig’s brother Hunter Kimbrough should be the manager of the expedition.

Now, the way in which “independent” pictures are made is as follows: the director gets a certain sum of money and shoots a certain number of miles of film; then he telegraphs back to the investors that the picture is, unfortunately, not completed and that he must have more money, and more miles of film, or else, unfortunately, the investors will have no picture. Thereupon, the investors put up more money, and the director shoots more miles of film, and then telegraphs that the picture is, unfortunately, not completed and that he must have more money, and more miles of film, or else, unfortunately, the investors will have no picture. There may have been some case in the history of movie expeditions where this did not happen, but I have not been able to come upon any recollection of it in Hollywood.

Eisenstein and his staff went to the tropical land of Tehuantepec, and made pictures of Tehuana maidens with great starched ruffles over their heads, and bare feet that gripped the rough hillsides like hands, and baskets made of gourds painted with roses. He went to Oaxaca and made pictures of masonry tumbling into ruins during an earthquake. He went to Chichén Itzá and made pictures of Mayan temples with plumed serpents and stone-faced men and their living descendants, unchanged in three thousand years. He climbed Popocatepetl and made pictures of Indian villages lost in forgotten valleys. Miles and miles of film were exposed, and packing cases full of negatives in tin cans came back to Hollywood.

Meanwhile, my wife and I found ourselves turned into company promoters, addressing persuasive letters, many pages long, to friends of Soviet Russia, devotees of Mexican art, and playboys of the film colony—anyone who might be tempted by a masterpiece of camerawork and montage. We interviewed lawyers and bankers, and signed trust agreements and certificates of participating interest. We visited Mexican consuls and United States customs inspectors, and arranged for censorship exhibitions. We mailed bank drafts, took out insurance policies, telephoned brokers, and performed a host of other duties far out of our line.

And Eisenstein went to the Hacienda Tetlapayac and made endless miles of film of a maguey plantation, with peons wearing gorgeous striped serapes, singing work hymns at dawn by old monastery walls, driven to revolt by cruel taskmasters, and hunted to their death by wild-riding vaqueros. He went to Mérida and “shot” señoritas with high-piled headdresses and embroidered mantillas. He made the life story of a bullfighter—his training and technique, his footwork and capework, his intrigue with ladies of fashion, and his escape from vengeful husbands, fiercer than any bull from Piedras Negras. The most marvelous material: pictures of golden sunlight and black shadows; dream scenes of primitive splendor; gorgeous pageants, like old tapestries come to life; compositions in which the very clouds in the sky were trained to perform.

But, oh, the tens of miles of film and the tens of thousands of dollars! The months and months—until at last Craig began to cry out in protest and to demand an end. Mexico is a land of difficulties and dangers, and Hunter Kimbrough was managing the expedition; her affection for him multiplied the troubles in her mind. “Bring them home!” became her cry, day and night.

And, meanwhile, Eisenstein was in Chapala, shooting white pelicans, gray pumas, and Nayaritan damsels paddling dugouts in mangrove swamps. He was in Cholula, shooting Catholic churches with carven skulls, and images of Jesus with real hair and teeth. He was in Guadalupe, photographing miraculous healings, and penitents carrying crosses made of spiny cactus, crawling by hundreds up rocky hillsides on bare knees.

“Bring them home!” demanded Craig; and she and her husband came to a deadlock over the issue. The husband was infatuated, she declared; he was as complete a madman as a Soviet director. They argued for days and nights; meanwhile, Eisenstein tore off the roof of a Tehuantepec mansion to photograph a dance inside, gave a bullfight to keep an actor from going to Spain, and made arrangements to hire the whole Mexican Army. Again Craig clamored, “Bring them home!” And again husband and wife took up the issue; this time the husband was seized by a deadly chill and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and he lay on his back for two weeks.

The raising of money went on, and freight trains groaned under the loads of raw film going into Mexico, and exposed film coming out. Eisenstein shot the standing mummies of Michoacàn, the flower festivals of Xochimilco, and the “dead peoples’ day” celebrations of Amecameca, and ordered the Mexican Army to march out into the desert to fight a battle with a background of organ cactuses thirty feet high. It was the beginning of the fifteenth month of this Sisyphean labor when Craig assembled the cohorts of her relatives and lawyers, and closed in for the final grapple with her infatuated spouse. “Bring them home!” she commanded; and for eight days and nights the debate continued. To avoid going to the hospital, the husband went to the beach for three days; then he came back, and there were more days and nights of conferences with the assembled cohorts. At times such as this, husbands and wives discover whether they really love each other!

Craig was with me in the dream of a picture—until she decided that Eisenstein meant to grind her husband up in a pulp machine and spin him out into celluloid film. She thought that thirty-five miles of film was enough for any picture. And then she stood and looked at her husband, and her hands trembled and her lips quivered; she had licked him in that last desperate duel, and she wondered if in his heart he could ever forgive her. He did.