Memories of Underdevelopment

"Dialectic" is a term often used in discussions of Marxist ideology and esthetics.  Generally, when I hear some learned fool deploying this word, my eyes glaze over -- I'm not sure what exactly it means and, most of the time, it's evident that the person using the word is also uncertain as to its definition.  The concept, however, seems inescapable when considering Tomas Gutierrez Alea's 1968 film Memories of Underdevelopment, one of the landmarks of Castro-era Cuban cinema.  Since I have been critical of the use of the word "dialectic", I think I had better define the term:  I take dialectic to mean a type of irony in which some phenomenon is analyzed from several, mutually opposing, perspectives.   This is probably inexact, but will suit our purposes.  In general, I think, the broad rhetorical concept of irony subsumes "dialectic" -- but since Alea seems to use a dialectical approach to his subject in Memories of Underdevelopment, it's probably worthwhile to consider his film through the critical rubric under which it was conceived.

In Memories, Sergio is a lanky, saturnine, handsome fellow in his mid-thirties.  The film begins with a documentary sequence at the airport -- Cuban bourgeoisie are fleeing Havana.  The sequence is alarming and heart-rending as family members bid farewell to one another, as we now know, never to be reunited.  (Throughout the film, Alea integrates documentary footage into his film -- this is one aspect of dialectic, the contrast between what is fictional and staged and footage that is obviously documentary in nature.)  The airport sequence that initiates the film also induces a conflicted response in the viewer -- the scenes have a fearsome intensity and the chaos seems tragic.  But, as we will come to see, the tearful separations at the airport represent a process that is purging Cuba of what we will come to see as an undesirable element -- an oppressive ruling class closely allied to the film's great bugaboo, the United States.  Sergio is properly sorrowful as his wife and parents board a jet for Miami.  But within a few minutes, we see that his decision to stay in Cuba is less political than personal -- he is unburdened of a nagging, unpleasant wife and, now, free to pursue his own ends in his luxury apartment overlooking Calle 23 and the Havana harbor.  Sergio looks a little like Marcello Mastrioanni and he's obviously a surrogate for the good-lucking and skinny Alea, who will appear, more or less, as himself later in the film.  Sergio is a lothario with a vivid erotic imagination -- he lustfully caresses an image of Botticelli's Venus and prowls the streets looking for girls to pick up.  Initially, he fantasizes about seducing his maid, Noemi (despite the Revolution, the old class roles continue to rule Sergio's part of society).  Noemi is a Baptist and Sergio amuses himself by imagining her in the river, her clothing slicked tight to her breasts, as he submerses her in the stream.  At loose ends, he drives around Cuba with his buddy Pablo discussing American cars and his friend's plan to flee the country.  On his way to a screening one morning, he encounters a young woman named Elena and entices her to his apartment.  She resists Sergio's seduction, alternately drawing him closer and, then, violently pushing him aside.  The girl wants to be an actress and Sergio's friend is a film director and there is an element of the casting couch in their relationship.  At ICAIC, the Havana center for revolutionary cinema, Alea is screening a reel of film consisting of sex scenes censored during the  Batista era.  "What will you do with this footage?" Sergio asks Alea.  "I will probably find a way to make a montage of it in one of my films," Alea says.  And, of course, this is precisely what we see in Memories of Underdevelopment.  From time to time, Alea interpolates other documentary montages into the film -- we see gruesome imagery of people killed and tortured during the Batista regime, photos of Bay of Pigs guerillas being marched to prison, harrowing pictures of starving children.  In the film's dialectic, this austere and grim footage co-exists with sequences of Sergio vigorously prosecuting his love affairs.  Sergio would be an enemy of the Revolution if he were political at all -- wandering downtown Havana, he mourns the destruction of his favorite department store:  with the store in ruins, Sergio mournfully intones:  "Now, Havana is just another provincial city." 

Sergio's love affair with Elena turns out to be a mistake.  The girl is dimwitted and can't enjoy the art that Sergio shows her.  Musing about her intellect, Sergio whispers to us that it is just another element of Cuba's "underdevelopment" -- the inability to achieve any coherent perspective on life.  (But this critique, it seems, applies to Sergio more than his 16 year old girlfriend; Sergio is 38.)  While touring the Hemingway house, Sergio ditches the girl.  European tourists take pictures and the house, which represents Yankee cultural imperialism, has been loving preserved for visitors.  Sergio attends a sort of critical roundtable on the question of "underdevelopment".  Intellectuals in suits and ties pontificate while poor Sergio looks alternatively bored or baffled.  The author of the novel on which the movie is based, Edmundo Desnoes, appears on the panel and isn't spared -- he offloads gibberish into the already overheated atmosphere of the discussion.  Finally, an aggressive American stands  up, demands to address the forum in English, and, then, denounces the intellectuals for talking instead of taking action.  (It seems that the Americans are better at everything, including revolutionary rhetoric.)  Sergio muses on a German girl with whom he had a love affair -- the notion "underdeveloped", here seems to equate to pre-pubescent teenage girls.  In a genuinely scary sequence, Elena's brother appears, accuses Sergio of rape, and he is tried criminally.  Elena's mother punches Sergio in the courtroom claiming that her daughter came home from being deflowered by the film's protagonist with her panties "full of blood."  The trial devolves into the question of whether the girl was a virgin when Sergio had sex with her and the hero, if  you can call him that, is acquitted.  Equally frightening is a scene in which officious administrators interrogate Sergio, at length, about his luxury apartment -- it's pretty clear that the Revolution is about to confiscate Sergio's digs.  Sergio seems oblivious to this -- his criticism of Elena seems apt for him as well:  he can't connect the dots.  But Alea's approach is scrupulously fair and analytical -- the Revolution can't connect the dots either:  Sergio's luxury apartment is confiscated but he's still allowed to collect income from several other apartments that he owns and rents to others.  Sergio realizes that staying in Cuba was an enormous mistake:  he has, as he puts it, "no family, no wife, no work, nothing."  He initiates a desultory affair with his Baptist maid.  The Cuban missile crisis ensues and Sergio peers out over the darkened city -- tanks have mobilized and there are military vehicles on the sea-side boulevard and a black-out has been decreed.  Sergio fully expects to die for a Revolution in which he has no interest at all. 

Memories of Underdevelopment is handsomely shot in lustrous black and white.  It contains all sorts of interesting footage including a strangely endearing sequence in which an American serviceman at Guantanamo Bay does a little dance for the Cuban surveillance cameras and the flips them the bird.   As a political artifact, the film is intricate, highly intelligent, and scrupulously fair-minded -- it certainly isn't propaganda for the Revolution and, indeed, seems to regard Castro and his minions with amused contempt.  (Andrew Sarris, on the evidence of this film, claimed inaccurately that Alea was censored by the Castro regime -- this was untrue and, in fact, the film community in Havana revered Alea.  He was never censored and made the films that he wanted to make -- a critic of the Revolution, he was, of course, a more thorough-going and harsh critic of the oppressive conditions that led to the Communist take-over.  The only time he was ever in 'hot water' with the regime was when Sarris made his misguided statements about him.)  Alea's genius in Memories of Underdevelopment is to ensnare the audience into identifying with someone who is, if not an enemy, to the Revolution, at least, profoundly indifferent to it.  Identification is not admiration, however, and the film leaves us with more questions than it answers.