MEMORIES OF UNDER-DEVELOPMENT Movie Review

Memorias del Subdesarrollo

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's remarkable 1968 film—the first feature produced in Castro's Cuba to receive American release—is the story of a thoughtful and sympathetic man caught between two worlds. He believes—in theory, at least—in the revolution, but he's far too attached to the comforts and privileges he enjoyed before the revolution to become fully committed to the cause. With an intelligence, insight, and sensitivity similar to that which Bernardo Bertolucci displayed in his Before the Revolution, Memories of Underdevelopment took the film festival circuit by storm in 1968 and rightly signaled the arrival of a major new filmmaker. Until his death in 1997, Tomás Alea would make the films that the hero of this film might have made: probing, romantic, humane, and idealistic, yet always nostalgically aware of the value of what he must leave behind. His films would forever redefine our often simplistic notion of the parameters of Third World Cinema.

NEXT STOP … Death of a Bureaucrat, Strawberry and Chocolate, Guantanamera!

1968 97m/B CU Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Nunez, Beatriz Ponchora; D: Tomas Gutierrez Alea; W: Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Edmundo Desnoes; C: Ramon Suarez; M: Leo Bower. VHS NYF, FCT