Original subtitles

# It won't be easy, you'll think it strange

Downloaded from YTS.MX

# When I try to explain how I feel

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

# That I still need your love after all that I've done

# You won't believe me

# All you will see is a girl you once knew

# Although she's dressed up to the nines

# At sixes and sevens with you

# Don't cry for me, Argentina

# The truth is I never left you... #

You know the words, you know the tune.

Even if you have never seen Evita, you're probably humming

along right now.

# I never invited them in...

40 years ago, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber premiered

a show that would change musical theatre and seal

their own international reputations.

But more than that, they took the figure of Eva Peron,

the little-known wife of an Argentine president,

and they created a global icon.

# I love you and hope you love me...#

From the West End stage to the avenues of Buenos Aires,

I'm going to explore the many faces of Eva Peron.

Think of Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher,

Grace Kelly, some of the most-iconic women of the 20th century.

Each a one-off, famous for dying tragically young,

or for blazing a political trail,

or simply for being beautiful and glamorous.

But Eva Peron did it all.

She was a star.

Eva Peron's life story became Evita, a chart-topping album,

a hit stage musical and an Oscar-winning film.

40 years after Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber created

a box office sensation, I am going to discover their heroine,

the charismatic wife of a ruthless politician,

both idolised and hated at home and abroad.

Evita, for half of the people, was a disaster

and, for the other half was the best thing.

Evita gripped a Britain with its own divisive female leader.

Margaret Thatcher was in power.

The Falklands War came along.

The world's biggest star begged to play her in the movie.

I got this four-page letter from Madonna saying,

"Forget everybody else - I'm the only person who could

"play the part."

It was this show that really sparked a raging debate about who this woman

had been, and what her legacy was.

If she had been given the choice of living longer or dying

as she did, leaving that indelible image,

she would have chosen dying.

Sure.

Musical theatre legend Elaine Paige was a jobbing actress when, in 1977,

she first heard of the part that would make her famous.

I was filming in Blackpool at the end of the Pier,

when my agent called me and said that there's a musical

that I want you to go for, called Evita.

And I can remember saying to her at the time,

"Yes, but I don't want to do any more musicals,

I'm getting stuck in a rut with musicals."

I love the idea that you had to be convinced.

But funnily enough, not so long afterwards I became utterly obsessed

with the idea of playing her. I thought, "I have to play this role.

"She's right, this is a great part for me." Why?

Well, first off, she was 5ft 2,

because usually...I was always too short for most things.

Secondly, it was a real-life Cinderella story, really,

of operatic, tragic proportions, wasn't it?

And this, I just thought, this story of this young woman born

into poverty, she went to Buenos Aires, made a career

for herself as a small-time actress on radio,

and then she met Juan Peron, and the rest is history, as they say.

It was two decades after her death that Tim Rice

and Andrew Lloyd Webber immortalised Eva Peron in musical theatre.

The character Tim crafted was alluring, but nakedly ambitious,

scheming her way from her humble birthplace, here in the Argentinian

Pampas, all the way to the presidential palace.

Yet many here see her as an almost saintly figure.

So who was the real Evita?

What no-one disputes is that the life of the real Eva,

the woman who inspired the musical, began in this unprepossessing house

in the tiny village of Los Toldos.

Eva was born in 1919 - the illegitimate daughter

of an estate manager and his mistress.

By the time she died in 1952, at the age of just 33,

she'd become the wife of the President of Argentina,

and the single most powerful woman in the whole of South America.

From lowly beginnings in Los Toldos, Eva's family traded up...a little.

Eva was still a girl when her mother was abandoned

by the children's father, and she moved the family

to the small town of Junin.

Eva's mother made a decent living, cooking meals at home for paying

guests, and she married off two of her daughters to local men.

But, at school, Eva was shunned by the other children

for having an unmarried mother.

That sting of rejection never left her.

At the age of 15, she got the heck out of Junin,

and she never looked back.

She had bigger dreams, bigger ambitions -

she was a girl in a hurry.

Initially, her ambition was just to get out of where she was.

Then it slightly changed - she wanted to be a star.

She wanted to act.

And then, when she found that the military guys

were the top guys to get to know,

she then wanted to be involved there.

And she found that acting, or being part of politics,

was the greatest stage of all for her.

Tim's mega-musical had an early, and rather unlikely inspiration.

I remember from my stamp collection as a child,

when I was about eight or nine, that Eva Peron

was on the Argentine stamps.

I remember being intrigued by the fact that Argentina

had somebody who didn't appear to be a queen on their stamps.

And I don't think I'd thought much about Eva or Peron,

or even Argentina, until many years later, when I happened to hear

a radio programme about her.

And so, what was it that you heard in that programme

that made you think, "This is the subject for a show"?

Well, it was a fantastic story.

I couldn't quite believe that this lady, who came from such

a humble background, had achieved so much.

It seems like a really interesting tangent to go off at,

when you've got a hit show, and you've got another hit show that's

already bubbling around, and you obviously would,

you would think, want to choose something that feels like a certain

smash, and yet, you decided to go off quite left-field.

Well, I hadn't got any other ideas.

I mean, if I'd had an idea for a different, you know,

possible smash, um, I guess we might have done that.

But there's a difference between being fascinated

by this woman and her rise to power, and then going back to Andrew

and persuading him to devote his time to make a show together.

Was there a persuasion job that was needed?

Well, I think he saw pretty quickly that this was a good story.

He was a bit worried about the fact that she wasn't a very nice person,

but I would say, "Well, who is?"

We wanted to get away and try and crack the initial writing bit.

We decided to go to Biarritz.

I can't remember why we chose Biarritz except...I think Andrew,

who was a great foodie, he said there's a couple

of good restaurants there.

But by the time we came back from Biarritz,

not only had we had four or five very good meals,

we'd written, I would say, about 30, 35 minutes of the show,

and we felt it was going well.

By the time Evita gets written, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice

already have two hits under their belts -

Joseph And His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

and Jesus Christ Superstar.

But they are after the hat-trick.

They want to make sure that they'll be written up

in the history books as one of musical theatre's

great double acts.

To boost their chances of a hit, they called the king of Broadway,

director Hal Prince.

He had triumphed with shows like West Side Story and Cabaret.

If he'd take on Evita, they'd be made.

I thought, "Well, that's the damnedest thing in the world.

"There's a funeral on stage with 200,000 mourners

"in front of the Casa Rosada. How in hell do you do that?"

I was hooked immediately.

But Hal Prince wasn't free for two years,

so Tim and Andrew used a trick that had made Jesus Christ Superstar

a smash - recording a concept album to excite audiences about Evita

long before they could see it on stage.

Well, we'd had a success with Superstar because we made

a record first - and that was forced on us,

because nobody wanted to do a show.

And so we decided with Evita, we'd do the same thing,

but this time we did it deliberately.

They figured a few chart-topping songs would build up hype,

and they were right.

Don't touch that dial, cos the hits are on parade.

The first single released was Don't Cry For Me, Argentina,

performed by Julie Covington.

# And as for fortune, and as for fame

# I never invited them in. #

It was the first song from a musical ever to reach number one

in the UK charts. Evita was going places.

My receptionist called, and said there were two young men

in the outside office, they had no appointment,

but they would love to see me for a few minutes -

they brought something.

So, I walked out of my office, and I saw Andrew and Tim.

I was surprised, totally, and they had the concept album

under their arm, and they gave it to me and they said,

"Now we're ready to talk a show."

Despite the album's huge success, Julie Covington did not want to play

Evita on stage.

It's not clear why, although Tim Rice later wondered

if she thought that he and Lloyd Webber were capitalist pigs writing

cheap songs about fascists.

Whatever the reason, when the show came to London,

and this theatre in 1978, Evita was a star vehicle without a star.

Britain watched, and waited, to see who'd get the role.

I auditioned, and I sang the Beatles' Yesterday.

Not as a pop song, though.

I did a very dramatic interpretation of it.

Most of the ladies who came in tended to sing

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, for obvious reasons.

Elaine claimed she didn't know it, which was clever.

And she sang Yesterday, by Paul McCartney.

And so, she had to come back to do Argentina.

I didn't have a strategy. I didn't, I didn't at all, really.

I mean, I just chose the material I knew would suit my voice,

that would show my voice off.

Do you remember the phone call coming?

Oh, it wasn't a phone call. It was about midnight.

Late, it was really late. And my doorbell rang.

"Crikey, who's that at midnight?"

And it was my agent. She comes into the apartment and she just says,

"I have come to tell you the part of Eva Peron is..."

I say, "Yes, yes?!" And she said, "..yours."

And I could not believe it.

And we opened the champagne and life changed, I can tell you,

from that moment on. Absolutely. And it...

I'm kind of emotional about it, just remembering it.

It was... It was a huge moment.

I know, you are actually, you are tearing up. Stop, stop.

Elaine Page, you're crying about this, and it's 40 years on. I know.

Well, I'm still here.

With national attention already grabbed by the album,

Elaine's casting ratcheted anticipation even higher.

The much-publicised casting problems of Evita mean the pressures

on this young actress will be heavier than usual.

So, could the carefully assembled dream team pull it off?

I was terrified the night before reversal.

I was in London, obviously, and I'd...

I thought, "Oh, God, this is so off the wall,

"what the hell are we embarking on?"

First of all, welcome.

Let me say this.

It's a very short schedule for a very ambitious show.

Everything about the theatre will focus you in and pull

the audience in, from the rear row of the stalls,

right into this environment.

It's a very simple, complicated production.

We went into rehearsal, and we worked sequentially,

chronologically.

All right? On. Sam, let's go.

This room's going to kill us.

And by the end of the first day, I thought,

"Oh, no, we got our 200,000 people, mourners,

"on the front of the Casa Rosada.

"The film thing is thrilling, this is all thrilling."

I totally 180-degree turned and felt excellent.

Through the weeks of rehearsal, Elaine and Hal shaped the iconic

character of Evita.

And that's it. All right. My God. OK.

So, this was the actual room where rehearsals happened?

This is the actual room, indeed.

And particularly where I worked with Hal Prince,

working on Eva, how we were going to make this woman come alive.

# When I try to explain how I feel...#

I have another idea.

Why don't you try playing it more...

And I can remember just over there, just a little further forward

than we are now with the piano, a huge box, and he asked me

if I would stand on the box.

You don't want me to put you up on a chair, do you?

Eh? Do you want me to put you up on a chair? No.

I could, you know.

He wanted to give me the feeling of height,

as if I was standing on the balcony of the Casa Rosada,

looking down on the descamisados, on the shirtless ones,

on the people below. Her beloved descamisados.

It's a compulsion, it's ambition.

It's... "We could all be there if we all have the drive that I have."

And he always reminded me as well, that it was a political speech.

I was not to be drawn into the beauty of the melody.

# Have I said too much?

# There's nothing more I can think of to say to you

# But all you have to do is look at me

# To know that every word is true. #

And then the music would build, and the crowds roared.

This is the...axis in the piece, where the whole story spins

off this moment. It's fantastic.

It is a fabulous song.

All right, here we go.

Evita's balcony speech is the heart of the character,

and her oratory and relationship to the people is key

to understanding the real Eva Peron, why she was so loved,

and so controversial.

This is where that scene takes place, the presidential pink palace,

the Casa Rosada.

It was from here that Eva Peron and her husband, President Juan Peron,

ruled Argentina with a rod of iron.

OK, so this is it, the Casa Rosada.

Washington gets the White House, and you have the Pink House.

Yeah, La Casa Rosada.

Elena Roger, an Argentine who has played Evita,

had to confront the tension between this British musical's

portrayal of Eva, and what many people here think of her.

To be up here on this balcony as a woman who's sung that role

of Evita, what kind of feeling does it give you,

both to be up here and to have inhabited that character?

I was living her life, dying every day, and doing

that speech every day, and having the crowd screaming,

"Evita, Evita!" every day.

It was very powerful.

I felt a very powerful woman in that moment.

For Argentines, the story of Eva Peron isn't entertainment.

It's raw, recent history that still matters today.

My whole life at home, people used to talk about politics,

about Peron and Eva Peron, and a lot of discussions

about if they did it well or not.

So, my family is a kind of...

My father's family was very Peronist, and my mother's family

was socialist, so they didn't like Peronists.

When you got that part, what were your feelings

about bringing this very divisive woman to the stage?

How did you feel about that?

I felt a lot of responsibility, because I was Argentinian.

So, I was talking about my country, the people I know...

..and it's not that centuries ago. We're talking about 50 years ago.

So I had to be very careful.

When I read and I understood perfectly what the musical

was saying about Evita Peron and my country,

I was quite scared, because I had to play that role,

but I couldn't say that. I mean, Evita, for half of the people,

was a disaster, and for the other half, was the best thing.

So, I had to go in the middle and I had to do it as human as possible.

For foreigners, though, it's the musical that's made

Eva Peron as much a part of Argentina's image as tango

and football.

There's Eva Peron on the balcony.

Hello.

Journalist Diego Brauda is showing me how,

in the tourist hot spot of La Boca, Eva is everywhere.

She's keeping company with sports stars,

the Pope, and another famous Argentine political icon.

So, there is another Eva up there.

Yeah. And she's next to Che Guevara.

Yeah. I love that.

Two Argentine...revolutionaries, depending on your take.

Very different people, obviously. Yeah.

They lived around the same time.

Eva died in 52, Che went on to become part of the Cuban Revolution

of 1959 and, for instance, you have them together in the musical,

but they actually never met or had any kind of relationship

in real life. So, that's a total kind of...

It's a confection on the part of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I mean, you can sort of see why, in a musical show,

that works really well, two incredibly famous sort of shorthands

for Argentine politics and revolution meeting -

but they never did. They never did.

Opposing Eva, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber rather

surprisingly set the figure of Che Guevara.

He's celebrated as a revolutionary in Cuba, but was born in Argentina.

# You let down your people, Evita

# You were supposed to have been immortal. #

He's been played by pop stars, from David Essex to Ricky Martin.

Che never actually met Eva, but the role gives the musical

another box office draw, a male star like Antonio Banderas.

# High flying, adored So young, the instant queen

# A rich beautiful thing... #

As we follow Eva Peron's rise on screen and in the theatre,

he's watching and criticising her every move.

# Tell me before I waltz out of your life

# Before turning my back on the past

# Forgive my impertinent behaviour

# But how long do you think this pantomime can last? #

Just like the album, the inclusion of Che was part of the plan.

Audiences who had never heard of Eva Peron

would definitely know Guevara.

It was all meant to help Evita's little-known story

triumph at the box office.

With reputations on the line, the team worked frantically

to get everything right.

# There is no-one, no-one at all Never has been...

Michelle Breeze saw it all as Elaine's understudy.

Andrew would be sort of dashing in every day,

and I don't think he slept the whole entire time the rehearsals were on,

really, cos Hal would suddenly cut a number that was in there

and then say, "I want another number that does this."

And then Tim would rush home and write it,

and Andrew would rush home and write it and bring it in.

The carefully crafted hype, with a hit record and legendary

director, and a very public search for a star, had worked.

Journalists were going to any lengths for a story.

The fever grew and got bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

And people were trying to get into the theatre all the time,

over the roofs and in through the fire exit.

But this is the time also of Princess Diana -

well, before she was Princess Diana.

So, when she met Charles and all that.

The circus started in Evita, and then sort of went on to her.

Soon, the paparazzi would turn its attention to the young

Lady Diana Spencer.

But for now, Eva Peron was the woman in the spotlight.

The first preview went really well, and the crowd went bananas.

It went down so well, the cast had to come back on stage

having almost, you know, they were almost down in the pub.

And then, the moment of truth, the first night.

The last hit by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber has dazzled

audiences for years, but will Evita?

I knew right away there was a kinetic excitement in the house

that I could feel while the show was unfolding.

And I had felt that once before, only once before, and that's

when I produced West Side Story.

At the end of the performance, the entire house, everybody

in the stalls, the dress circle and in the gods,

were on their feet applauding, and shouting, and applauding.

And it went on, rather embarrassingly,

for about five minutes.

And I know that is a fact because at the end of the week,

David Land, who was the producer, presented me with an EP record,

vinyl record, of the applause.

That's such a great present! Isn't that a great gift!

It went on, and on, and on.

And I think it was only then, really, that we all thought,

"Wow, I think we're in a hit." Yeah.

With the success of Evita, the name of Eva Peron

went around the world.

But here in Argentina, this musical by two British men

was controversial, because its Eva was a scheming tart,

determined to win power for herself and her husband

by any means necessary.

And here in the country of her birth, many see Eva not as a sinner,

but as a saint.

Kristyna Alvarez Rodriguez, an Argentine congresswoman,

is Eva's great-niece.

She's also the custodian of the legacy at the Museo Evita.

Tell me about some of the stories that you were told

about Eva's character when she was growing up?

Eva succeeded in becoming a movie star, albeit not

a terribly good one.

And her performing career taught her valuable lessons.

DIALOGUE IN SPANISH

How did Eva use clothes throughout her life to define

herself at different moments?

In her 82 pieces of baggage, Senora Peron has 200 dresses,

quite apart from coats and furs.

This carefully constructed, glamorous image was one

of the reasons so many disliked her.

It feels very modern, that way that she used her own

visual image to her advantage.

So, how much did the musical get right?

Take a jaunty number entitled The Money Kept Rolling In.

It's all about Eva's foundation, the heart of her political world.

# Never been a fund like the foundation Eva Peron

# Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling... #

She funded it by levying a day's pay from workers

and strong-arming businesses, and the rich.

Her critics claim she creamed off cash for herself.

Her admirers pointed to the schools and hospitals the foundation built.

# Accountants only slow things down

# Figures get in the way

# Never been a lady loved as much as Eva Peron. #

It doesn't seem like the stuff of box office hits,

but Rice and Lloyd Webber tell both sides of the story,

and they capture the way Argentina's poor were devoted to Evita.

They were known as the descamisados, the shirtless ones.

And their adoration for Eva Peron surges through this musical.

They still remember her today.

The neighbourhood of Jose Leon Suarez is less than an hour's drive

from the wealthy heart of Buenos Aires.

I've come here to meet the Evita Movement,

who claim inspiration from Eva even today.

But when you're doing these kinds of projects,

Sandra, do you feel a sense of pride that you're carrying

on Evita's legacy?

In her lifetime, the elite of Buenos Aires thought Eva common

and grasping, but in today's city, her admirers come

from all social classes.

Lalo Aldorette presides over the restaurant Peron Peron,

which offers a heady blend of hero worship and hard liquor.

It's a very political city, Buenos Aires.

I really...

You can see later here what has happened,

how the people see the photographs, how they take pictures,

how they sing the Marcha Peronista.

Still, nowadays, you can see people coming here and crying,

because they knew Evita, when they were young,

young, and when they arrive and see the altar de Evita,

you can see a lot of letters that they write to Evita.

Because it was a very important person to a lot of people.

You like a strong woman, don't you, Lalo?

Look, look at your face, you love her! It's, it's, it's...

It's as strong as Peron, and sometimes, more stronger

than Peron, because when Peron was afraid, she never was afraid.

And she worked till the day she died.

Well, salud to that! Salud. Salud.

It's a strong and sweet... Whoa! ..drink, like Evita.

I tell you what, that punches you in the face.

If that is Evita, that is strong!

It's delicious, but oh, my God.

It's not just nostalgia. The legacy of Juan and Eva Peron

is called Peronism, and it's still a powerful political force.

Jorge Taiana is a former Argentine Foreign Minister,

and ardent Peronist.

How much do you feel that Eva's vision fed into what Peronism was?

She was an extraordinary woman.

She refused to have the traditional role of the First Ladies.

She fought with the ladies of society that were in that position,

and what she developed, at that time, was a strong link

with the workers, with the ladies, and well...

She was really the person who obtained the vote for women,

and that was very important.

There have, though, of course been criticisms levelled

at the way she exercised power of the, sort of, almost

Marie Antoinette-like appointment of people close to her,

the way that she used funds and put them through her foundation,

then to channel them out to the poor.

What's your take on that, and the criticisms

that have been levelled at her?

The way in which she did things was not really very important.

The important issue to discuss was what...

..did she represent to the society in general,

and in particular, to the poor.

You can see, in the house, the little photo and the light

like a saint, it brings to the society and to the poor people

the idea of dignity, and the idea of that they have rights.

And they don't need the mercy of the power.

But, how much longer would Juan and Eva's ideas last?

At the latest election, Argentina voted in a non-Peronist President.

Several times they have said, "Oh, the Peronism is dead."

And always, it is like a Phoenix, it is born again.

Eva still has fierce critics, too.

Congressman Fernando Iglesias is a regular on chat shows

denouncing the Peronist legacy.

They were totalitarians, but they are failures in the...

In creating a totalitarian regime in Argentina.

But this was the direction they were, you know...

Against opposition, against free press,

against every kind of individual and civil liberties.

Eva Peron was, maybe, the most important figure of Peronism.

Do you feel she created a sort of culture of benefits, of dependency?

They didn't do it in terms of the state, helping poor people,

and something official.

There was just because she was so good, she was some kind

of goddess of poor people, and this was...

This created some kind of cult of personality,

that was very strong.

And it still remains in the memory of an important part

of the Argentine society.

Argentina was, at the beginning of the 20th century,

among the ten most...

The ten richest countries of the world, in terms of GDP.

And now, it's...

It becomes a middle term developed country,

with 30% of the population in poverty.

So you would lay that decadence, that decline, at the

door of Peronism, and specifically, Eva Peron?

Well, yes, Eva Peron was a substantial part

of the authoritarian tradition of Peronism.

Particularly, Evita was very able to raise hopes in future

and she spoke to workers and to people and they raised

a very genuine hope about...

..in workers and people.

But the problems is that the results were disastrous.

In their lifetime, the Perons were hugely controversial,

at home and abroad.

Although Juan Peron had been democratically elected,

America saw him as a dictator.

The former Army officer took the oath of the chief executive's

office, laughing up his sleeve at the ease with which he had duped

an idolising public.

Ahead of him were ten years of looting and dictatorial splendour.

Her jewel box was filled to overflowing, with better than

a quarter of a million dollars' worth of glittering little baubles.

Argentina's first lady went first class.

And the Peron's corrupt reputation was to cause the musical huge

problems when Evita opened in New York on Broadway

the year after its West End triumph.

We got pretty bad reviews, we were accused

of glamorising a fascist.

And the critics there were determined not to like it.

Basically, it was slated.

However, we won all the Tonys and we won the Critics Award.

I almost felt like giving the Critics Award back,

saying this is...

I mean, I can't remember what the Critics Award was,

it was some sort of hideous statue or something.

But I thought, this is insane, they slagged us off and they'd far

rather give it to Stephen Sondheim, who probably didn't have anything

out that year, just as well, we wouldn't have won if he had.

Whatever the critics said, New York audiences fell for the show

as hard as their London counterparts.

Donald Trump's favourite musical, Evita.

When it was played on Broadway, he reportedly saw it six times.

Who knows what lessons in strong leadership the young Trump learned

from the musical.

But in Britain, one politician had been taking notes.

This is a glowing review from an MP written in a letter

to their speech writer.

"My dear Ronnie, it was a strangely wondrous evening yesterday,

"leaving so much to think about.

"I still find myself rather disturbed by it.

"But if they can do this without any ideals,

"then if we apply the same perfection and creativeness

"to our message,

"we should provide quite good historical material

"for an opera called Margaret in 30 years' time."

The ambitious author of this letter was one

Margaret Thatcher.

Just six months after she wrote this, she'd become Prime Minister.

And when, in 1982, Thatcher's Britain went to war

with Argentina over the Falkland Islands,

Don't Cry For Me became the defiant, if unofficial, anthem

of the British task force.

MUSIC: Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

It feels like it's so much of a piece that you get Eva Peron

as this iconic, tough, female political leader,

and then suddenly, you're into the age

of Margaret Thatcher, and then you're into the age

of the press frenzy over Princess Diana.

Did you have a sense that Evita the musical was part of this very

zeitgeisty thing about...

about just hugely influential women in the public eye?

Around this period of time, it was very much about women

and women having a voice in political life.

Margaret Thatcher was in power, the Falklands War came along.

I can remember being invited to Downing Street,

and Margaret Thatcher holding my hand, taking all the women

of the cocktail party around Downing Street.

There was some painting behind us, something to do with

the Falklands War, a ship or something,

and she wouldn't let go of my hand.

I was representing, in a way, the musical Eva Peron.

She aligned herself to that.

Emotions from the Falklands were still running high,

when in 1996, Alan Parker and his cast arrived to film

Evita in Argentina.

His star provoked feverish media interest.

Out of the blue, I got this four page letter from Madonna saying,

forget about everybody else, I'm the only person who could

play the part. I'll do absolutely everything...

Everybody was kind of pleased, she was the most famous woman

in the world at the time, as was Eva Peron.

Madonna's casting brought angry protesters onto the streets

of Buenos Aires.

Many Argentinians say the Andrew Lloyd Webber script

portraying Evita as ruthless, corrupt, and sex crazed is untrue.

Some of Madonna's detractors painted signs near her hotel,

reading, "Evita lives, Madonna, get out."

I saw all these signs everywhere, it said "Fuera Madonna, Eva, Evita."

I thought, that's very nice of them to welcome us,

and then they explained to me that actually fuera means go away

or something like that. Might be even ruder, I'm not sure.

And then I suddenly saw my name on a painting on a wall,

you know, saying, go home. You and your English task force.

But, you know...

And it's very scary, actually, because that's South America.

As filming progressed, curiosity won out over hostility.

Wherever you went, there would be journalists, and once,

I was in a loo actually, in a stand up urinal,

and this bloke came next to me and he sort of put his tape recorder

in my face whilst I was peeing,

which is most embarrassing, actually.

And you try and give him his answers, whatever he needs,

and then he left, thinking he'd had this unique story scoop.

And as I left, there was someone...

There was a bloke in the stall, and he said, "Hello,

"hello, I've just heard Alan Parker give an interview."

He was in the loo, and you suddenly think,

God, this is getting ridiculous.

Parker had met Argentina's then President, Carlos Menem,

who gave permission for filming, but not at the Casa Rosada.

Until, that is, Madonna intervened.

He didn't really want us on the balcony, he said,

"Well, you wouldn't be allowed to be on the balcony of

Buckingham Palace," is what he said. And I said, "That's probably true."

And then on her own, Madonna got a private audience with him,

and had the recording of Don't Cry For Me, Argentina,

her version. I said, "Take him that."

And so she took that and she played it to him.

And the next day, we had permission to use the Casa Rosada.

So actually, Madonna did, in half an hour,

what we had been trying to do from months and months and months.

You just need to be Madonna.

Exactly, I think that might have helped a bit.

How did it feel for you when you were up there,

obviously, talking with Madonna, working with her?

It was weird really, this film we were directing,

the crowd, from the balcony, and of course I've got to get

the crowd to react in a certain way.

And in a way, it's very manipulative. That's what my job is.

And in a way, that's what she was,

too, you know, very manipulative of the crowd.

How much did your feelings for Eva Peron, the woman,

change throughout that process?

In the end, if I was making a dramatic film,

it would be infinitely more critical of her as a person.

I had that contradiction in my head, you know, am I being truthful

to the dramatics...

The truthful story, dramatically.

Or am I being truthful to Andrew and Tim?

So, it's two taskmasters, really, and that was the tightrope

that I walked all the time.

In the film, Madonna movingly delivers a dying Eva's final speech.

# Let me simply go on as the woman

# Who brings her people

# To the heart of Peron. #

Rice and Lloyd Webber's Evita is never more fragile and sympathetic

than in these tragic last moments.

# I'm Argentina, and always will be. #

But the real Eva Peron died as she had lived, fighting.

These were her last words to her beloved descamisados.

Eva died of ovarian cancer, on the 26th of July, 1952.

She was 33 years old.

Millions lined the streets for her funeral, distraught mourners

flocked to her coffin for 20 days.

Some were even crushed to death in the crowds.

For most people, that would be the end of it. But not Eva.

Instead, this is where her story really gets strange.

Eva's body was brought here to her office at the Labour Confederation,

a famous embalmer shut himself away and he worked on her for a year,

after which he declared she was as whole, 'intacta',

as the day she died.

The days of dictator Juan Peron are numbering,

as riot succeeds riot in Buenos Aires.

With Eva dead, her husband's popularity nosedived,

and her perfect body was still unburied by the time

Juan Peron was ousted from power in 1955.

A ten year dictatorship ended in South America.

Juan Peron, strong man of Argentina, reached the end of the road.

After one...

He fled into exile, leaving the body behind,

and the country under new military rulers.

That's the point at which the musical ends,

but not the story.

Because the body could become a rallying point for Eva's

still loyal followers.

Argentine film-maker Carlos Pasini Hansen uncovered what happened next.

The musical Evita ends with this idea that Eva's body

disappears for 17 years.

And your documentary opens with that, this journey of the body.

What actually happened?

The then military government decided that it was a real danger for them

to have the remains of Evita, that at some point would

have been claimed by somebody, the workers, etc, etc.

So, it was decided that, with the help of the Vatican,

the body would be secretly transported from Argentina to Italy

and buried under a false name.

And they kept that secret until, you know, 1971, when it was returned

to Peron in Madrid.

Extraordinary idea that she probably is the most travelled dead body,

ever. Corpse, yes. Absolutely.

It sounds almost funny, in retrospect, the way you tell it,

but it must have been quite dangerous and challenging to make

a film about a figure who was then so reviled?

I went to the presidency and asked to the secretary of press

and propaganda, what would be your reaction if I want to make a film

about Evita Peron now? And he said to me, "Nyes..."

And I said, "What?" I had never heard "Nyes."

What does it mean? And he said, "Well, it means neither yes nor no."

And I said, "Jesus, well, this is not going to be very easy."

When Juan Peron return from exile in the mid 1970s,

he brought Eva's body back, too.

She now lies in her family tomb in the famous La Recoleta Cemetery,

visited daily by tourists and admirers.

She's in there, somewhere.

And if that doctor's work has held up, Eva Peron looks exactly the same

as the day she died.

But Eva's story doesn't end with her death,

or even the return and burial of her body.

Her afterlife as a pop culture icon means she's more loved,

more hated, more famous than ever.

Eva Peron is invoked everywhere, from the death of a Princess...

She is up there in heaven somewhere, she's the biggest thing since Evita.

..to the crowning of a Queen on RuPaul's drag race.

# I give the people drama

# And I did it oh, yes, I did it better than Madonna. #

For all her many incarnations, the Evita first embodied

by Elaine Paige will be the most remembered.

# No-one else can fill it, like I can. #

Look, I've brought this. Oh! She brought the head!

I don't like it. It's your death mask.

It's got eyelashes and eyebrows, they're real.

Elaine! Don't show it to me!

And this was in the coffin at the beginning of the show.

So they made me go to Madame Tussaud's and have straw stuck

up my nose and things and I had to lay down

and I had plaster cast put all over my face.

It was the most claustrophobic moment of my life.

The thing is though, at the end, it is very macabre,

the idea that Eva was preserved in formaldehyde

and you've got the death mask.

This is really a story of triumph over adversity,

into mortality if you like.

What does the embalmers sing at the end?

# Eyes, hair, face, image

# All must be preserved

# Still life displayed forever

# No less than she deserved. #

And that's... It is eerie.

It is that sense, I mean, she has been preserved

but as an icon.

She didn't just allow her background to be what it was,

she transcended that. And transcended death almost.

And transcended death.

How much do you feel a sense of Eva Peron's legacy

weighing at all on yourself?

You created the show about her that has made her into an icon.

I don't feel any great sense of, my God, I have misled nations

of people because it is not just a polemic thing.

She was the greatest thing of all time,

she was the nastiest piece of work of all time,

which isn't true in either case.

She was incredibly astute at being able to put whatever

performance of herself she wanted to portray that week, or that day.

I think, ironically, that doing Eva in a musical is almost the most

accurate way of getting over what she was like. Why?

Well, because she was glamorous, she used crowds,

she was entertaining, she looked good.

She was just a star.

I think Eva herself being an actress

and a wonderful performer,

before huge crowds would have probably loved the musical.

Eva Peron's story has been told so many times on page,

stage and screen.

Her global fame assured by two young Brits who created a hit musical,

and an unforgettable song.

In Britain Evita would define an era of upheaval

and charismatic, divisive women.

In Argentina she is a political force to this day.

Eva Peron is an icon, not least here in Ciudad Evita

near Buenos Aires.

Because who else but this extraordinary woman

would be immortalised with an entire town built in the shape

of that famous profile?

# I'm Argentina, and always will be. #