Zoot Suit screens at Film Forum this Thursday as part of a tribute to writer-director Luis Valdez.
Luis Valdez wrote this in 1978 for El Teatro Campesino and it became the first Chicano play to run on Broadway. Edward James Olmos played the narrator El Pachuco there and reprised the role on film. Valdez staged the movie as a film of the stage production, and that theatrical self-awareness is part of what makes it strange and alive.
The story is based on actual events: the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, in which Mexican American teenagers were convicted in a corrupt proceeding, and the Zoot Suit Riots that followed. It is history told through music and rage.
If your taste runs toward American history films that don't behave like history films, this is for you.
Before this: Salt of the Earth.
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