LUCIA
Cuba, 1968, 160 minutes, Colour.
Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Nunez, Adela Legra.
Directed by Umberto Solas.
Lucia is considered one of the great films of the Cuban cinema, made eighteen years after the revolution. Director Umberto Solas began his work at the time of the Cuban revolution and worked as an assistant on several films before moving to direction in the 1960s. His initial focus in several of his feature films was on the lives of Cuban women. However, for some time he was not promoted in the industry due to discrimination against homosexuals.
However, he continued to direct films with the assistance of his editor and co-writer, Nelson Rodriguez. In later years his films have become somewhat sentimental, for instance Honey for Oshun (2001).
The film focuses on three Cuban women, each of them named Lucia. The three stories have different time settings: the war of independence from Spain, the 1930s and, finally, the 1960s.
1. A Cuban classic? Its status? In the 60s? Later?
2. Film-making in the Castro regime, the aftermath of the revolution, socialist perspectives? The role of propaganda (especially in the third section)? The Cuban heritage, culture, religion and absence of religion? The place of women?
3. The threefold structure of the film, each of the women being called Lucia? The continuity in themes for Cuban women? Emerging women by the 1960s? The value of the three stories in their period, their portraits of society? Women destroyed and surviving?
4. The three stories and the interconnection, the interplay and its effect?
5. The different periods, costumes and décor? Re-creation of the period? Evocation? Black and white photography? The musical score? The background music, the songs?
6. The first Lucia: society and wealth, the role of the Catholic church? Prim manners and formalities? Lucia and her family? The women and the gossip? The man, attractive? The wedding, the dress? The war, her brother? The attraction, the court, Spain? Love and possibilities? Passion and truth? The details of the war, the massacre? Grief, Lucia and her being distraught? The madwoman? Propaganda overtones?
7. The second Lucia: Cuba in the 1930s, similarities of society, differences? Lucia and her family, her relationship with her mother? The man, love? The details of her life, day by day? Marriage? Violence and revolution? The ugliness of prison? Bureaucracy, defeat and winning? The lifestyle of the period? Intensity? Death?
8. The third Lucia: the 1960s, the detail of life in the village, the ethos of the Cuban revolution, of Fidel Castro? The co-op? The pickup? The marriage, the macho man? Prison, the reading, clashes and violence? Lucia going away? The advice and reconciliation? The possibilities of hope? The propaganda elements in this story?
9. How well delineated were the characters? The symbol of the name Lucia, its meaning of light? Its portrait of Cuba? Its history of Cuba? Its portrait of Cuban women – and the beginning of more feminist stances from the 1960s? A film of the 1960s seen in the retrospect of the many decades of Castro’s presidency and rule of Cuba, the isolation, Cuba’s acceptance in the world?
