In 1931, famed Soviet filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein travelled to the Western Hemisphere to make his first non-Russian film, Que Viva Mexico, a project financed by muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair. The project withered and died when Sinclair became impatient with Eisenstein's meticulous shooting methods, whereupon Eisenstein returned to Russia and Sinclair assembled the completed footage into a quasi-documentary, Thunder Over Mexico. Distributors were not forthcoming for this cobbled-together film, which was then consigned to oblivion until 56 minutes' worth of Sinclair's cut were reassembled in 1941 as Time in the Sun.