Analysis Of Tomas Gutierrez Alea's Memories Of Underdevelopment

Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), is a film that represents a time frame between the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1961. It develops upon the life of Cubans during the post-revolution. The storyline evokes from a bourgeois Cuban, Sergio Corrieri’s reflection upon his life, his relationship with women, and his relationship with the society. Sergio, unlike his wife, family and friends, chooses not to abandon the country for the capitalism somewhere else. However, he continues to criticize his country as “third world” and “underdevelopment”. And he continues to observe his world through the eyes of incomprehension, and egotism. By concentrating on Sergio as the central figure in the film, the director can convey his political and narrative intentions. Examples of the use of cinematography techniques, such as camera scale, frame, quality and movement in the film will demonstrate how the director chooses to portray Sergio as a character, to offer a subject-objective view of the early years of the Cuban revolution.

The quality of camera shots operates to individualize Sergio as a self-involved and emotionally isolated character. Through the use of medium close up, over-shoulder shot and point of view shot, the complex emotion that Sergio encounters with the leave of his family is expressed. At the beginning, the film introduces the leaving sequence of Sergio’s family and wife in the airport. They symbolize the Cubans, who desire to escape from Cuba, the politically and economically underdeveloped country to United States. With a hand-held shot, audiences see the stamping of passports and the hugging between Sergio and his parents in a medium close up. However, the b...

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...tor has adapted massive uses in cinematography techniques to depict Sergio as a character, to offer a subject-objective view toward the revolution and the living in Cuba. Through the use of medium close up, over-shoulder shot and point of view shots, the audience can witness the scene and make inference that Sergio is an emotionally isolated and self-involved Cuban. On the other hand, the camera movement can reveal the background information about Sergio, when the point of view shot can recognize him as an internal hopeless Cuban in the Cuba post-revolutionary. Lastly, the scales of the camera can emphasis the distance between the camera and the subject. Thus, the long shot is used to portray Sergio in a lost and isolated space. All in all, the director is able to convey his political and narrative intention with the use of camera scale, frame, quality and movement.