#1045: SOLÁS, Humberto: Lucía (1968)
SOLÁS, Humberto (Cuba)
Lucía [1968]
Spine #1045
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
A formally dazzling landmark of Cuban cinema by Humberto Solás, the operatic epic Lucía recounts the history of a changing country through the eyes of three eponymous women. In 1895, Lucía is a tragic noblewoman who inadvertently betrays her country for love. In 1932, she is a member of the bourgeoisie drawn into the workers' uprising against the dictator. And in the postrevolutionary 1960s, she is a rural newlywed struggling against patriarchal oppression. Shot in an array of distinct, evocative visual styles, Solás's sprawling triptych is a vital document of radical progress.
160 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
in Spanish
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2020
Director/Writers
Screenplay by Humberto Solás, Julio García Espinosa and Nelson Rodriguez.
Solás was 27 when he directed Lucía.
The Film
The Film
At 160 minutes, Solás has plenty of time to develop character. By the end of the film, we feel like we truly know and understand the three Lucías: Raquel Revuelta (1895); Eslinda Núñez (1932) and Adela Legrá (196..)
Their male lovers are also well-developed, particularly in the third section: Rafael (Eduardo Moure) (1895); Aldo (Ramón Brito) (1932) and the cruel Tomas (Adolfo Llauradó) (196..)
**
Solás uses many interesting (i.e. non-Hollywood) cinematic devices:
Part I
- Lucía — nearly past the age for marriage, and always in a virginal white dress — and her girlfriends are like little schoolgirls, as one of them describes the rape of the nuns with a smiling, secretive desire … Brouwer’s music punctuates the disparity between the story being told and a flashback to the actual rape scene with sharp harpsichord dissonances … the scene is graphically brutal … and it turns out (for the sharp-eyed viewer) that one of the raped nuns is the raving “witch” of the village — Fernandina (Idalia Anreus)
- At 0:49:50, there is an absolutely magnificent long-shot of the couple on horseback — a speck in the multi-layered landscape.
- The battle scene is beautifully edited — from medium shots of the men on horseback, to close shots where the camera is right in the middle of it all — then cutting to Lucía’s terrified face, often overexposed to make it whiter and whiter …
- The black Cuban fighters (mambises) give new meaning to term “bareback.” They ride with no saddle and no clothes!
- Lucía’s horror and revenge end in a stunning overexposed freeze-frame …
Part II
- Leo Brouwer’s score is fascinating.
- He uses Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4 in a variety of arrangements, all to great effect …
- The opening reflects Lucía and her mother apparently being hustled off to some remote place, the better for the father (never seen) to carry on an affair. It is probable that Solás had to leave a lot of this section on the cutting room floor, because it is not much amplified.
- Lucía’s meeting with Aldo is shrouded with ambiguity. She stumbles into the cabin where is recovering from a gunshot wound — cut — she is smiling and thinking of him — cut — she is back in the cabin where they obviously now know each other!
- The history of all three sections is crucial to an understanding of this film. Gerardo Machado. 1932.
- Aldo is perhaps the most sympathetic of Lucía’s lovers, compared to I and III, at least. While his best friend is clearly a philanderer, Aldo seems faithful by comparison, and is at least the purest ideologically … a true revolutionary who nevertheless meets his fate, leaving poor Lucía II as stranded and abandoned as I and III …
Part III
- We first meet Lucía III as she is jumping into a crowded truck bed to go to work in the fields. Being a newlywed, she is mercilessly teased by the other (older) women, who can’t even seem to hide their jealousy at her apparent happiness.
- Subsequent scenes show her with Tomas, enjoying the bliss of their union in their little house.
- Funny scene: A blonde woman in mod clothing is dancing to pseudo-rock ‘n’ roll … the older women are baffled:
- “The Russians have started with their immoral ways!”
- Another man dances with Lucía, infuriating Tomas …
- In the next scene, Tomas is nailing the doors and windows shut.
- In the same way that Lucía I and II were “locked up” and shuttered from the outside world, Lucía III will be literally locked up.
- Soon, the Castro government is sending “literacy experts” to the countryside to teach the women how to read and write.
- Tomas — who probably truly believes in the “revolutionary spirit” is more the imperialist than he would ever imagine himself to be — the imagery of him smoking the Castro cigar, plays against his machismo with great subtlety.
- The final scene in the salt flats is quite powerful. Tomas — who thinks himself invincible — is unable to restrain and recapture his wife — a powerful group of women subdue him — and when he finally gets Lucía alone and has the chance to permit her to regain some personal power, he loses out to her passionate commitment to better her own life, and his own unyielding machismo. Powerful stuff …
- The entire scene resonates through the face of a totally new character, a young girl who smiles silently at what she is seeing.
- Brouwer scores most of this part with the famous song, Guantanamera.
“The Cuban filmmakers of the sixties sought not just to build an industry from the ground up but also to create a popular art that mirrored and addressed the shifting realities and consciousness of the people. Despite the absence of a strong filmmaking tradition in prerevolutionary Cuba, local audiences had long been exposed to Hollywood product — a stream that would soon dry up with the U.S. blockade — and to Latin American strains of melodrama, mostly from Mexico. At least in its inaugural decade-long golden age — before the “Marxist institutionalization of culture,” as Solás would describe the later turn of events — this was a notably pluralist cinema, one that resisted orthodoxy and dogma, approached established genres as pliable templates, and retained a healthy wariness of strict ideological modes like socialist realism, whlich guerrilla leader Che Guevara deemed a ‘frozen’ form. To the perennial problem of finding an appropriate mode for revolutionary art, Lucía represents an ingenious solution: instead of settling on one form, Solás uses multiple, allowing the movie to gain its power and meaning through juxtaposition and accumulation, as in a dialectical process.”
Commentary
None.
Introduction
Introduction
To the film by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese.
Humberto & “Lucia”
Humberto & “Lucia”
A 2020 documentary short by Carlos Barba Salva featuring Lucía director Solás, actors Legrá and Núñez, editor and screenwriter Rodriguez and filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet.
Very nice doc, featuring the director, his actresses, his sister and other filmmakers.
Towards the end, there is a quick glimpse of other Solás films, which are mostly hard to find in the U.S. home media market:
- Minerva Traduce el Mar (1963)
- Cecilia (1981)
- Amada (1983)
- Un Hombre de Éxito (1986)
- Obataleo (1988)
- El Siglo de las Luces
- Barrio Cuba
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