Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 06/29/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)

Sergio Corrieri in Memories of Underdevelopment

Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez, Omar Valdés, René de la Cruz. Screenplay: Esmundo Desnoes, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, based on a novel by Esmundo Desnoes. Cinematography: Ramón F. Suárez. Production design: Julio Matilla. Film editing: Nelson Rodríguez. Music: Leo Brouwer.

Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), whose family has fled Cuba for Miami after the revolution, remains in Havana. A disaffected, well-to-do intellectual, he knows his days are numbered, but he remains, having an affair with the working-class Elena (Daisy Granados) as he watches history unfold. A provocative film that was somewhat better received in the United States than in Cuba.