BURN

Italy, 1969, 112 minutes, Colour.
Marlon Brando, Renato Salvatori, Evaristo Marquez.
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.

Burn is director Gillo Pontecorvo's next film after his highly acclaimed Battle of Algiers. In it he takes up several themes that were considered in the former film - colonial tyranny, revolution, race relationships, causes and freedom -and explores them in a West Indian context of the nineteenth century. Portuguese and British rule come under direct criticism and attack and the film becomes a dramatic plea for tolerance and justice.

Marlon Brando returns to his Fletcher Christian type characterisation for Sir William Walker, a British trouble-shooter, who invents and sells wars. As the slave chosen by Walker to lead his revolution, Evaristo Marquez has enormous strength and human intensity and becomes the focus of the film.

The complete film does not come across as a complete success, but it is well worth seeing and discussing.

1. What were the meaning and overtones of the title? (cf. the use of colour in the credits).

2. Was the structure of the film effective: the two halves of Sir William Walker's interventions with the English bridging sequences? Why?

3. Comment on the impact of the music. Did it enhance the plot?

4. Was it important that Marion Brando took the part of Sir William Walker? If a less known actor had taken the part, would the film have had different impact?

5. Did the film set its mood well - the geographical and historical accounts for Sir William's benefit? The West Indian colonial feeling?

6. What were the main issues of the film? It was obviously a message film? What did the director feel most strongly about? Was he biased? Was the film convincing?

7. Was the colonial situation convincingly portrayed - both Portuguese and British (and the new local colonialism?)?

8. What kind of man was Sir William Walker? What motivated him? Why did he go to Quemeida? What scenes communicated his character most tellingly? E.g. insulting the natives.

9. Trace his manoeuvring of Jose Dolores and his followers, of Teddy Sanchez and his followers. How clever was he? How well did he play on their deeper feelings? Were his insights into character accurate? How necessary was the revolution? Who gained? How? Who lost?

10. How was Jose Dolores transformed? What did he become?

11. Why did he assume power over Teddy Sanchez? What was the lesson of his failure at government? What effect did this have on all concerned?

12. Was Teddy Sanchez a convincing character - in his relationships with Sir William Walker? In the assassinations, in ruling?

13. How important was the English interlude - in tone, in information, in the cynicism of colonial politics and economics?

14. Why did Sir William go back? Was he admirable at all?

15. What right had Jose Dolores to rebel and harass the interim government? (What had happened to Sanchez and government in the meantime?)

16. How cruel was Walker - in the severe seeking out of Jose Dolores? (What was the impact of the relentless severity, the execution of Teddy Sanchez, native fighting native, the intervention of Britain and the young soldier, the slaughter?)

17. How proud was Jose Dolores? Was he right to die rather than accept Sir William's kind of freedom?

18. What had been achieved politically and economically by the end of the film?

19. How important for Britain was the failure of the myth of Jose Dolores and stopping its spread?

20. Comment on the dramatic repetition of the mulatto offering to carry Sir William's bags.

21. What was the impact and lesson of his murder?

22. What message has such a film on colonialism for today?