Backs Turned (Cuba, 1956) 57 min B&W DIR-SCR: Mario Barral. PROD-DOP: Manuel Conde. CAST: Maria Brenes, Jose De Savadon. (Something Weird)
Something Weird Video (in their commendable efforts to release numerous forgotten obscurities) distributes this Cuban film under the title Cuban Confidential, with lurid box art, to give it the semblance of some heavy-breathing melodrama, which it certainly is not. Rather, one could loosely call it a spin on Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night, as a listless bureaucrat takes the day off work to walk around the Cuban city and countryside and ponder the human condition. “Why was this child allowed to die?” is typical of the many existential lines that are muttered in this rambling narrative. For a while, it seems that this effort is some kind of surreal, dreamlike treatise, as the protagonist wanders in a cemetery, witnesses a baby dying in a hospital, and even chats with an inmate who is sentenced to death row, and would have been better for it. Yet, the film also strains for realism, which doesn’t work, as he wouldn’t be allowed to visit a condemned man in his cell. It is very hard to find that balance between a realistic and dreamlike setting (another Cuban film, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Death of a Bureaucrat, achieves it very well). This film is stilted and thuddingly amateurish, bookended by a man sitting in patio furniture talking about how we’re all the same. Most of the dialogue is delivered with the speaker’s back to the camera, which may the reason for the film’s title, but this could also be a ploy to ignore lip-sync issues for its English dubbing (ironically, the film was financed by American producers). This essay on dehumanization is more interesting for the tertiary view of pre-Castro Cuba.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #9.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.