Sunday Cinema, #3

Mikhail Kalatazov, Soy Cuba (Я Куба) (1964) This film is certainly the only example I can come up with of a hybrid between tropical exoticism and Soviet agitprop. Apparently the Soviet censors judged that Kalatazov had depicted the Batista-era decadence of Havana with a bit too much sweet nostalgia, and so the film languished in obscurity until it was resurrected in the mid-1990s thanks to the apolitical cinephilia of some prominent American directors. What I like most is the blend of classical propaganda elements with appreciation for all those things, such as nightclubs, that do not fit easily into any political message or other. I am assuming, but do not know for sure, that the evil American businsessmen ogling the girls in the club are played by the children of mixed American and Cuban parentage, who found themselves useful to the burgeoning Castro-era film industry as stock American villains. Their acting is so heavy-handed as to briefly occlude any non-propagandistic virtues of the film, but even this contrasts in an interesting way with the class and polish of the musical number.

Comments

[Anna Alexandrova]

This is great, thanks! I've seen the rest of the film. It is painfully moralistic and repetitive in its message, but incredibly beautiful aesthetically. It makes me question the common assumption that Soviet artists were insincere... It's hard to see how they could be so talented and yet so heavy handed, as you say.