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General entries
Burn! 4 July 04
Section: article
Categories: Film / vhs
I will always love Marlon Brando for his courageous involvement in this politically revolutionary film in the late 60s at the height of the US war against Vietnam.
Brando plays the fictional character William Walker (apparently named after the real 19th century American mercenary and madman). He is an “envoy” of the British Crown sent abroad to “represent” British colonial interests.
The film is in English and is titled Burn!, though it is often listed as Quemada! and Queimada!, which mean burnt and are in fact the Spanish and Portuguese names for the fictional island on which the story takes place, referring to the scorched earth strategy carried out on the island by first the Portuguese and then the British.
Politics
Scorched earth strategy
January 6, 1967: In the biggest offensive of the Vietnam War yet, 16,000 U.S. soldiers and 14,000 South Vietnamese use a scorched-earth policy to destroy 500 buildings, bunkers, and tunnels, while capturing large stocks of VC weapons. Thousands of pro-VC civilians are resettled in camps to the south. The area of attack is northwest of Saigon, territory long held by the Viet Cong.
Atrocities Management by Edward S. Herman
...how easily and effectively the U.S. establishment and media focused on the cruel acts and killings of the indigenous National Liberation Front (NLF, “Vietcong”) and made them into sinister killers (“terrorists”), when in fact the terror of the U.S. and its local and foreign proxies was worse by a very large factor.
Agent Orange: Better killing through chemistry By Richard Alan-Leach
(On Operation Ranch Hand )
Passages from the film:
From a strategy meeting with the key figures in the Quemada regime ten years after Walker had first orchestrated a British takeover of the Portuguese colony by manipulating a rebellion of the enslaved residents:
Mr. Shelton (Quemada representative of the Antilles Royal Sugar Company):
The situation is the same.
William Walker:
Yes, but the problem is different… ten years is a long time—it can be a very long time.
General of Quemada Army:
Even so, it’s still only ten years.
Walker:
No, I only want to explain, General, that very often between one historical period and another… ten years certainly might be enough to reveal the contradictions of a whole century.
•
William Walker (Brando) speaking to the military staff in preparing to crush the insurgency led by José Dolores:
Walker:
Now we must realize that if we are to succeed in eliminating José Dolores it’s not because we’re better than he is, or that we’re braver than he is—it’s simply because… we have more arms, and more men than he has.
And we must also realize the soldier either fights to earn his pay—or because his country forces him to do so.
But the guerilla, on the other hand, fights for an idea, and therefore he’s able to produce 20, 30, 50 times as much—is that clear?
•
The captured José Dolores speaking to a foot soldier escorting him:
Soldier:
Maybe they will let you live.
Dolores:
If they let me live, it means it is convenient for them, and if it’s convenient for them, it is convenient for me to die.
Soldier:
Why? [...] ...but then, after a while, maybe they will free you?
Dolores:
No, little soldier, it doesn’t work like that. If a man gives you freedom, it is not freedom. Freedom is something you—you alone, must take. You understand? Well, you will one day, because you’ve already started to think about it.
Title: Burn!
Directed by: Gillo Pontecorvo
Screenplay by: Franco Solinas, Giorgio Arlorio
Starring: Marlon Brando
With: Evaristo Marquez, Dana Ghia, Valeria Ferran Wanani, Giampiero Albertini, Carlo Palmucci, Norman Hill, Thomas Lyons, Joseph P. Persaud, Alvaro Medrano, Alejandro Obregon, Enrico Cesaretti
Year: 1969 (sometimes listed as 1970)
Directors of Photography: Giuseppe Rezzolini / Marcello Gatti
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Art director: Piero Gherardi
Sets: Sergio Canerani
- Title: Burn!