Hi, thanks for the feedback. I am unaware of Tepepa being a real historical figure, so would appreciate a source for this info if you have access to it. Either way, there is no doubt that Giulio Petroni purposefully based the character specifically on the mythical “Zapata” depicted by Elia Kazan in “Viva Zapata” (direct and unambiguous quotations of this film’s framing devices and dialogue pervade “Tepepa”).

The sentence you quote seeks to convey the extent to which Petroni and Milian begin by repeating the ready-made “Cuchillo” archetype from “La resa dei conti” and “Corri, uomo, corri” (a picaresque Commedia dell’arte Harlequin, wretched peasant and wandering trickster), and twist this characterisation into the ruthless and assertive “Zapata” figure we see for the majority of the film. Apologies if this argument is not expressed as clearly as it could be. I shall look again at how I construct it.

That’s great. Thanks for the information. The film’s uneasy balance between history and myth is all of a sudden even more intriguing.

Yes, reading through my argument again, I can see that the sentence is not sufficiently contextualised. The “becoming Zapata” comment is supposed to be metaphorical and intertextual (suggesting purely that Petroni apes the tropes, dialogue and framings of Elia Kazan’s / Marlon Brando’s fictional cinematic character “Zapata”), not historical or literal (actually having Milian become or represent the historical revolutionary Emiliano Zapata). By omitting adequate discussion of this cinematic reference point, it is unclear that this is what I mean.

My book will elaborate upon this argument and, I hope, make it in a more cogent manner.