I was surprised to learn from the 1001 text that Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) was not an independently produced post-revolutionary Cuban picture, but in fact a state-sponsored Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematograficios film. So nonchalant about the political nature of its early 1960s setting in Havana, it’s hard to believe that Castro’s government not only approved of this picture, but funded its production. Equally baffling in this context, is the picture’s focus on a single individual and his apathy to the communist overthrow of the Batista regime.
The individual in question is Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), a former businessman whose prospects are all but destroyed by the socialist takeover. After sending his parents and his ex-wife to Miami to avoid the violence of the coup, he remains in Havana, resolving to become a writer. However, the conflict by which he is surrounded bores him, and he doesn’t really seem to care to write about it or anything else, other than the women who fill in his loneliness. He laments for lost loves while spending days watching television and peeping at neighbors from his balcony, content for a time to live off of the income he makes as a landlord. The irony of the dilapidated structures that surround his posh apartment building proves all the more odd when again remembering this film’s source of financing, and while Sergio is certainly critical of the “underdeveloped” nature of Cuba under Batista, he dismisses its current status with the same label. When Sergio meets the beautiful and young Elana (Daisy Granados) and convinces her to come up to his apartment for a tryst, his lonely nature is briefly curtailed. But as with his complaints about Cuba, he dismisses Elana as underdeveloped and uncultured. He tries to educate her, planning trips to museums and taking her to Hemingway’s house, but she’s bored by the things that he uses to mold her into his ideal. When her family intercedes in their relationship, claiming that he raped her and ruined her prospects, he’s forced to explain himself to a grand jury. Acquitted of the charges he continues to wait out the revolutionary changes, only mildly optimistic that the Castro regime will bring about a better Cuba.
Memories of Underdevelopment contains three fantastic sequences that each, in their own way, evokes the complexities of the past, present, and future of Sergio’s Cuba. The first is a not so subtle jab at the former regime. As Sergio takes Elana to meet with a film director (Gutiérrez Alea) friend, they sit in a screening room watching a montage of all of the footage cut from imported films that were censored by the moralistic Batista. In yet another staggering irony, Memories is critical of this censorship. In another sequence, as the lovers peruse Hemingway’s personal affects, Sergio marvels as the American writer’s abilities, slightly jealous and again dismissive, claiming that the author’s possessive feelings about the island were, at best, faux romanticism. Looking to the past, Sergio realizes the potential futility of his own future aspirations, beset with the feeling that the present might not be as glorious as some would claim either. Finally, the film concludes with a montage comprised of news reel footage of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Retrospectively in 1968, this was already scathing criticism of events that brought the world to the brink of self-destruction. Both Kennedy and Castro can be heard addressing their respective people, each assuring them that their nation’s resolve for peace is equaled only by their preparedness for war.
Irony is where this picture lives, and while good films often touch on ironic themes or actions, this picture immerses itself in them. Sergio is no more certain of a great future for Cuba at the film’s conclusion than he was at its outset, and yet the picture itself tries to be optimistic. Memories of Underdevelopment focuses on one, rather bourgeois individual, but tries to make a statement for the proletariat. It attempts to promote Cuban nationalism through a European-minded protagonist. Mostly, it is critical of Cuba’s status as an underdeveloped nation, while somehow seeming to suggest that the best way to relieve this unwanted status is to blow more of Cuba up.
This was the first post-revolutionary Cuban film to be released in the United States. It was shown in 1973, five years after its initial release on the island, and was selected by the New York Times as one of the best films of that year. In what might be the saddest irony of the film, Gutiérrez Alea was not allowed a travel visa to receive a special award given to the picture by the US National Society of Film Critics
Language: Spanish (primary)/English
Runtime: 97 Minutes
Available @video.google.com
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