In Excess: Sergei Eisentein's Mexico - Cineclub

Figure 24. Sergei M. Eisenstein and Arkady Boytler at hacienda Tetlapayac, summer
of 1931. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
imagination in the depiction of women in “Maguey,” where, falling into a
stereotypical pattern, Eisenstein simplistically pits the evil, wealthy Sara
against the impoverished, innocent Maria. In a heightened atmosphere
in which life crossed into art and vice versa, Ledesma’s emphasis on
the need to protect Chabela from the “dangers” of the lifestyle of the
guests of the hacienda itself marked the crossing of the fi ctional and the
real, echoing Sebastian’s effort to protect Maria. In 1931, Mexico City
was visited by a sudden infl ux of foreign (mostly American) artists and
writers who arrived in time to populate the milieu around Eisenstein and
his entourage. Many of them also traveled to Tetlapayac to see the crew
in action. The Americans were often recipients of Guggenheim grants,
or were supported by the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations: for
instance, Frances Flynn Paine, a painter and the former wife of Joseph
Freeman, the editor of Free Masses and a former TASS correspondent
in Mexico, whom Eisenstein had known since his visits to the Soviet
Union in the 1920s, came down to organize an exhibit in New York City
of Diego Rivera’s work. Ione Robinson, Rivera’s assistant in 1930, was
down on a Guggenheim. Upon her arrival in Mexico, she moved into the
house that she shared with the Russian American artist Victor Arnautoff,
who was also working on the murals for Rivera. Carleton Beals, another
Guggenheim recipient, was Arnautoff ’s roommate. Zohmah Day was
Robinson’s classmate and another young American artist who was to
marry Jean Charlot in 1939. This company, plus Katherine Anne Porter
110 : chapter three