Burn!

Burn! (1969)

Queimada

The man who sells war.

The professional mercenary Sir William Walker instigates a slave revolt on the Caribbean island of Queimada in order to help improve the British sugar trade. Years later he is sent again to deal with the same rebels that he built up because they have seized too much power that now threatens British sugar interests.

Date of release
1969-12-21
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (140)
Runtime
2h 9m
Genres
History, Drama, War
Director
Gillo Pontecorvo

Casting

Interesting facts

Burn! is a 1969 historical war drama film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Set in the mid-19th century, the film stars Marlon Brando as a British agent provocateur sent to overthrow a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean by manipulating a slave revolt to serve the interests of the sugar trade, and the complications that arise from the formation of a subsequent puppet state.

Production

Burn! was originally scheduled to be shot entirely in Cartagena, Colombia. Troubled working conditions caused the production to run over-schedule and over-budget, leading to United Artists nearly firing Pontecorvo. Marlon Brando insisted the film be finished and paid for the production to be moved to Morocco, where it could be completed for less money. Other scenes were shot at in Saint-Malo, France; the U.S.

Alberto Grimaldi originally suggested Sidney Poitier in the role of José Dolores, but Gillo Pontecorvo insisted on casting Evaristo Márquez instead. Marquez was not a professional actor, but an illiterate Colombian herdsman, whom Pontecorvo met while location scouting. Many of the actors were also non-professionals, a neorealist-inspired approach Pontecorvo previously used in The Battle of Algiers.

Marlon Brando had the opportunity to have a role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Arrangement once again with Elia Kazan, but chose instead to work on this film. He also had to turn down a major role in Ryan's Daughter because of this film's production problems. In his autobiography Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me, he said: "I did some of my best acting in Burn!".

In the original script, the fictional island of Queimada was a Spanish protectorate, which many of the historical Caribbean colonies were. The Francoist government pressured the filmmakers to alter the script, and since Portugal accounted for a considerably smaller share of international box-office receipts than Spain, the producers did the economically expedient thing by making the Portuguese the villains.

The English-language export cut of the film runs 112 minutes, 17 minutes shorter than the original Italian version. Brando was dubbed by Giuseppe Rinaldi for the Italian version. Brando's voice can be heard only in the shorter English-language version.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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