#12 Cuba — Soy Cuba (1964)

Why I Chose This: Cinematography is one of my greatest loves in the world of cinema. After seeing many state that Soy Cuba has the best cinematography of any film they've seen, I was instantly interested in seeing it.


After watching so many pictures and seeing so many cinematic techniques near perfected over a number of films, it is rare to see something which truly makes one re-discover the magical nature of cinema. Soy Cuba is a work which not only made me embrace the magic, but also changed how I look at cinema.


The cinematography in Soy Cuba reminds me of a quote I once read from Werner Herzog regarding Fitzcarraldo. In it, he says that even children nowadays can tell if something has been computer generated or digitally tampered with, but when the boat is dragged up that hill, you know it's real and are witnessing something special. The same is true here; the shots aren't digitally put together like in Children of Men, or cuts hidden behind peoples backs as in Rope (as impressive as both those films are), these are real, and that gives them a power like no other.


The camera seems as much a part of the world as the characters themselves, and displays empathy towards them. In the club dance scene, the camera flows delicately around the room with the soulful singer, before tossing around chaotically along side the empassioned and confused bar dancer. Perhaps the most impressive shot is during the funeral scene, where the camera climbs up a building, crosses the street in the air into the window of a cigar factory, travels the length of the room and back out into the street where it delicately floats above the proceedings.


Every shot is beautifully composed on top of the acrobatic movements. Frames of sugar cane fields, waterfalls and cloudy landscapes are like warm chocolate for the eyes. The extensive use of dutched shots adds to the dreamlike quality of the shots, contrasting with the harsh reality of the content.


The story is split into four vignettes, each attacking Batista's Cuba or glorifying the Cuban Revolution. The first is about a girl named Maria who lives in a shanty town and hopes to marry her fruit-selling boyfriend. Due to Batista's rule, nothing can save them from starvation except becoming a bar dancer and drug dealer respectively.


The second story concerns an old sugar cane farmer who's harvest is the best in years. During the harvest, he is told that his land has been sold to a fruit corperation and that he must leave.


The first two sections are both heart-breaking, sincere and very human. The viewer connects with the characters after a short period of time and feels for their plight. The next two, however, are more obviously politically minded and feature very heavy-handed messages about the revolution and Batista's rule. Since this is primarily a propaganda film, this is to be expected, but it may impact some audiences opinions of it somewhat.


In the penultimate story, a student becomes a martyr for the cause after him and his friends get very involved in the revolution. Although the content is not as compelling as the first two stories, some of the scenes are incredibly visceral and the cinematography especially excellent.


A small family in the mountains where the rebels are fighting are the focus of the concluding section. After their home is bombed by the current government, the father takes up arms to protect his wife and children.


Although the political message is about as subtle as a Michael Bay film, Soy Cuba is perhaps the most visually stunning work I have witnessed. If you can stand being beat about the face with communism for a few hours for the sake of hypnotically beautiful art, then this is a film for you. If not, maybe try The Cranes Are Flying instead.

#3 Brazil – Black God, White Devil (1964)

Number three, exciting times. Something a bit different this time.

Why I chose this: Because it would be boring if I liked every film I reviewed for this series. Also because I want an outlet for ranting about how bad this film was and this series was lying around, unsuspecting. Enjoy.

I am a very open-minded person. I also tend to see the good in things, be it people, food or film. I can generally look past the flaws in a work if it really has something to it and pride myself on being able to take something from almost every picture I watch. This film was complete and utter rubbish. Let me tell you why.

I was looking forward to watching this film all summer while I was back home. I saw it described as a mystical, visually stunning and hugely original take on the Western genre. This sounded very much like El Topo – one of my favourites – so I was very much interested in seeing it. As happens with most of the films I stumble across, it was quickly lost in my vast watchlist, popping up at me whenever I trawled through it and making me more eager to get a chance to watch it. I noticed that it was available at the University library, so decided to wait and take it out after the holidays. After returning to my studies and settling in, I saw it on the shelves of the University’s collection and instantly grabbed it. I watched it the same day and was dismayed to find that it wasn’t so much a film, rather than a series of scenes made specifically for the purpose of mutilating my brain cells and making my eyes bleed.

Almost every review I have read describes the film as a visual feast, or cinematographical masterpiece. I’m sure they must have watched El Topo instead and mistaken it for a similar film. The cinematography was a mess of amateurish fast pans, random zooms and shaky handheld camerawork where it didn’t make sense. When the camera was put in one place and held there, some moments of beauty shone through, but they were then promptly defecated on by a zoom to half of someone’s face.

The editor on the film is called Rafael Valverde. I have concluded that Mr. Valverde is, in fact, a drunk Edward Scissorhands. I can find no other logical explaination for the random cuts, arbitrary scene endings and general lack of coherence present in this insult to film-making.

The sound effects team were obviously tourists who happened to be passing by one day. I counted two different sound effects for gunshots (which there are a lot of). If Wikipedia is to be trusted, the director was 25 when he began writing and directing the film. Some simple calculations gives the conclusion that the film was around 7 years in production. The credits list a foley artist for the film. For these numbers to work, he must have spent around two hours working and seven years picking his nose, laughing at the actors or working on a film worth the time spent watching it.

Speaking of laughing at actors. I spent a fair amount of time doing this as soon as Corisco – a bandit with a God complex – shows up. Three moments in particular demonstrate perfectly his skill at ruining a scene. The first is a tender moment when he seems to connect with a young girl in his entourage. They circle each other, the camera circles the other way, the music swells and they move in to kiss. He then proceeds to rub his beard all over her mouth and tries to eat her face. A second, where he and his cowherd-turned-bandit compatriot are discussing morals and other characters. It was one of the few scenes in the film which felt right. The camera stayed still on a well-composed frame of barren wasteland, the dialogue was meaningful and the plot seemed to be making sense. Suddenly, Corisco takes great offense at something his friend says and jumps towards the camera, arms flailing with all the tone and subtlety of an ape on acid and shouts “LIES!”. Everything the scene built up to is instantly torn down in one masterful moment of awfulness. The third and most glaringly horrible is his death (oh yeah, spoilers, I hope by now I’ve convinced you not to see the film). Shot to the sound of the same bullet as near everyone else in the film, he stays standing and – I’m not joking here – tosses his arms out like Rose in Titanic and spins around for a bit. He then falls to the ground and I cheer internally, hoping that we are now near the close of the film.

The really sad thing about this film is that I can tell the filmmakers tried to accomplish something here. There are interesting themes and profound dialogue hidden somewhere in the gruesome mess which point to the framework of an excellent film. Avoid.

Recommended from Brazil:
Not this
Black Orpheus
City of God
Pixote
Central Station

#2 Italy – Red Desert (1964)

Number two in my series. That means I’m actually committing to doing this: not letting it get lost in the sea of other projects and responsibilities that come with being an Honours student. I’m here to stay.

Why I chose this: Antonioni’s films have been sitting like a gaping hole in my generally broad film-watching spectrum. I hadn’t seen a single one until around a month ago when I watched Blowup and was left unimpressed. I decided last week, however, to persevere and watch some others on his impressively large list of supposed “masterpieces”. This lead me to taking out his whole 60s trilogy on alienation (L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse) alongside his first colour film, Red Desert, from the library.

I appreciated L’Avventura for its cinematography and mysterious tone, but didn’t feel any connection to it. I loved both La Notte and L’Eclisse for a myriad of reasons which would require another few articles, so I will spare you that. A few days later I sat down to watch Red Desert and was absolutely blown away. It now sits as the only Italian film which I have rated 10/10, which I think is reason enough to include it here.

Andrei Tarkovsky once said in an interview that colour film is no more than a commercial gimmick and that he did not know of a single film which used it well. This statement seems more and more true as cinema ages. The magical years of Technicolour, hand painted sets and true experimentation with colour are gone. Directors tend to see colour as being simply “there” (e.g. almost every film which will show at your standard multiplex), use it for some heavy-handed symbolism (e.g.Schindler’s List, A Single Man) or use it as a bland wash to give a film a certain ‘look’ (e.g. The Matrix, A Very Long Engagement). In this writer’s mind, colour should not be a simple tool for getting across some arbitrary point, it should live and breathe in the world of the film. When used correctly, it can strengthen tone, develop themes and reflect the state of characters. Sharp readers may protest that A Single Man – which I listed among films which use colour ‘wrongly’ – does use it for the latter. The difference is that the utilisation goes against what is happening in the film. When a film is trying to explore the subtlety of human affection and loss, whilst going against this subtlety with its techniques (desaturated colours = sad, saturated colours = happy-ish), the impact of the content is lessened.

There are, of course, modern exceptions to the ‘rule’ of mediocrity. Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique comes to mind, alongside the films of artists like Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar Wai. These exceptions included, I feel that nothing can match the surreal beauty of Technicolour experimentation. I find myself captivated by the colours in films such as Black Narcissus, The Holy Mountain and Suspiria. Red Desert now stands at the top of my list, which is sadly ironic, as Tarkovsky pointed to the film as one he thought used colour badly further into the interview I mentioned earlier.

Slightly tangential exposition aside, this brings me to what Red Desert does which sets it apart from its peers. Here the colours meld, clash and overlap in a variety of ways to effectively mirror the feelings of the protagonist, Guiliana (Monica Vitti) in the landscape itself. Similar to the way in which Antonioni uses cityscapes and buildings in his alienation trilogy to show how small and lost we seem in our creations, the colours mimic Guiliana’s distance from reality and emotional confusion.

In true Antonioni fashion, the plot isn’t so much a story as a series of events driven by the characters and their environment. Guiliana is the psychologically disturbed wife of a factory manager. She begins to question everything about her life when she meets a restless engineer named Zeller (Richard Harris) who seems drawn to her.

Vittorio Gelmetti’s atmospheric electronic score, coupled with distorted industrial sounds create an uneasy soundtrack to the film. Passionate scenes are punctuated by fog horns and brief escapes to nature bring with them the sounds of fire from factories. These make the cold, industrial modern world inescapable – a theme visited many a time in the film.

One of the most unforgettable scenes in film history occurs when Guilliana escapes to a dream world in her head. The sea and sand of a beach glisten with natural beauty. This land is hers alone. Whereas in the real world, the machines make their monotonous pounding, here, the rocks are alive and sing with a serene and strange voice. Then suddenly we are drawn back into reality, forced to confront sickness, an ugly, derelict Earth and the ever present alienation of a modern world.

Red Desert is one of the most original pictures I have had the pleasure of seeing. It is at once beautiful in its composition and ugly in its nature, pessimistic for the state of a place which birds won’t even come near, yet optimistic for our chances with learning to adapt. A film for anyone who has ever struggled to find connections in our world.

Also recommended from Italy:

Antonioni’s alienation trilogy

Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, La Strata, Nights of Cabiria)

Vittorio Di Sica (Umberto D, Bicycle Thieves)

Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy

Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West, Man With no Name trilogy)

Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo, Arabian Nights, Mamma Roma, Canterbury Tales)

Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red)

Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust)