Film Forum

(1964) Havana, late 50s. Helicopter-borne, the camera swoops from a dark sea over a lush tropical island, its palm trees like white feathers against an almost equally dark sky; then goes through and under a village on stilts amid the wetlands; a fashion show atop a skyscraper as the camera slides down to a rooftop swimming pool, and follows a dark-haired bikinied beauty into and under the water. And that’s just the beginning. Director Kalatozov (The Cranes Are Flying), along with legendary poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, screenwriter Enrique Pineda Barnet and camera-maestro Sergei Urusevsky, did for the 1959 revolution what Eisenstein had done for Russia’s, creating a riot of innovative photography, rapid-fire cutting, screen-filling close-ups, hair-raising handheld tracking shots, crane shots, elevator shots, and still-astonishing how-did-they-do-it shots. DCP restoration. Approx. 143 min.

A MILESTONE FILMS RELEASE

Presented by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese

Reviews

“One of the most deliriously beautiful films ever made.”
– Manohla Dargis

“There’s no way to describe [it] except as a rhapsody on the themes of Cuban vitality and liberty. For this film is in four movements that go from the decadent fleshpots of Havana under Batista to the gathering of insurrectionaries in the mountains. You know the judgment you’re meant to pass – but you want it all, as in a holiday of the senses.” 
– David Thomson

“They’re going to be carrying ravished film students out of the theaters on stretchers.” 
– Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker