Memories of Underdevelopment (1968)
(Memorias del subdesarrollo)
Country: CUBA
Technical: bw/1.66:1 97m
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez
Synopsis:
An intellectual member of the property class decides to remain in Havana after the revolution but finds himself increasingly isolated from the world around him.
Review:
Caught between a rejection of the staid hedonism of the Europeanised elite and contempt for the ignorance and lack of sophistication of the island populace, our hero is bound to come across as a less than sympathetic figure. In addition he takes advantage of a pretty little aspiring actress, whose family try to entrap him into marriage; an action that fails but cannot help but leave a bitter taste behind. There are fantasy sequences, musings over the legacy of Hemingway, a cameo by the author Edmund Desnoes, and newsreel footage of the time; a very fluid and free use of film techniques, bordering on abstraction. At times reminiscent of Battle of Algiers, it is a rounded portrait of a nascent state as seen through the eyes of a partial but shrewd witness.
(Memorias del subdesarrollo)
Country: CUBA
Technical: bw/1.66:1 97m
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez
Synopsis:
An intellectual member of the property class decides to remain in Havana after the revolution but finds himself increasingly isolated from the world around him.
Review:
Caught between a rejection of the staid hedonism of the Europeanised elite and contempt for the ignorance and lack of sophistication of the island populace, our hero is bound to come across as a less than sympathetic figure. In addition he takes advantage of a pretty little aspiring actress, whose family try to entrap him into marriage; an action that fails but cannot help but leave a bitter taste behind. There are fantasy sequences, musings over the legacy of Hemingway, a cameo by the author Edmund Desnoes, and newsreel footage of the time; a very fluid and free use of film techniques, bordering on abstraction. At times reminiscent of Battle of Algiers, it is a rounded portrait of a nascent state as seen through the eyes of a partial but shrewd witness.
(Memorias del subdesarrollo)
Country: CUBA
Technical: bw/1.66:1 97m
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez
Synopsis:
An intellectual member of the property class decides to remain in Havana after the revolution but finds himself increasingly isolated from the world around him.
Review:
Caught between a rejection of the staid hedonism of the Europeanised elite and contempt for the ignorance and lack of sophistication of the island populace, our hero is bound to come across as a less than sympathetic figure. In addition he takes advantage of a pretty little aspiring actress, whose family try to entrap him into marriage; an action that fails but cannot help but leave a bitter taste behind. There are fantasy sequences, musings over the legacy of Hemingway, a cameo by the author Edmund Desnoes, and newsreel footage of the time; a very fluid and free use of film techniques, bordering on abstraction. At times reminiscent of Battle of Algiers, it is a rounded portrait of a nascent state as seen through the eyes of a partial but shrewd witness.