Lucía (1968)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Humberto Solás

Writers:

Julio García Espinosa (writer)
Nelson Rodríguez (writer)

Release Date:

October 1968 (Cuba)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Traces episodes in the lives of three Cuban women, each named Lucía, from three different historical periods: the Cuban war of independence (with Spain), the 1930's, and the 1960's. |

Plot Keywords:

1930s | Betrayal | Sexual Repression | New Latin American Cinema | Revolution

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Raquel Revuelta	...	Lucia I
Eslinda Núñez	...	Lucia II
Adela Legrá	...	Lucia III
Eduardo Moure	...	Rafael
Ramón Brito	...	Aldo
Adolfo Llauradó	...	Tomas
Idalia Anreus
Silvia Planas
Flora Lauten
Rogelio Blain
Maria Elena Molinet
Aramís Delgado
Teté Vergara
Flavio Calderín

Runtime:

160 min

Country:

Cuba

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:M18

Company:

Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos (ICAIC)

A time-portrait of a culture

Lucia is a great film, but to properly evaluate it the viewer has to have a certain amount of knowledge about Cuba and its people. Others who have criticized it seem to show a dismal knowledge of Cubans. The typical criticism runs rife with a lack of understanding of what the director's intentions were, and even to the point of bordering on crude stereotyping. Cubans are a passionate people with an intelligent sense of humor. What may appear as overdone acting and caricatures may often be purposeful hyperbole to dramatize certain points by employing satirical license. Lucia was MEANT to be funny and satirical. If the viewer is prejudiced against Cubans, he may instead laugh AT rather than with the director and his cast. The joke is on him who fails to see the real picture. The Cuban revolution promised not only liberation from chauvinistic practices against women but also was supposed to have eliminated racism, which actually was very much alive in Cuba before Castro. Viewers unaware of the marked racial heterogeneity of Cubans (the whole spectrum of races and colors, including Northern European types), not typically found in most Latin American countries, would view the elimination of racism as ludicrous, because of the mistaken belief that "everyone in Cuba is brown and of the same race." This focus on racism was part of the lampooning in this movie, particularly in the second "Lucia", unfortunately lost on some viewers whose comments are posted in this forum. As for women's liberation, I would direct the laughing hypocrites at the history of this country, the USA, in its belated acceptance of suffrage. Women in the US weren't allowed to vote until well into the twentieth century! The third "Lucia" was subject to the very universal experiences of an insecure spouse. Is that uniquely Cuban? Of course not. What made this film attractive and a superlative work of art was the co-mingling of the unique Cuban experience with the universal features common to all of humanity. Any normal human being can see in "Lucia" the familiar microcosmic events that scaffold the overbearing macrocosmic events of a revolution, a relationship that the director clearly wanted to convey as a process that did not begin in 1959, but actually much earlier in Cuban history and projects into an uncertain future as well. This continuum, reflected in the sequentially arranged personal lives of three women, is the main message of this very intelligently composed movie.