Cuban and Soviet officials initially rejected Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1964 film I Am Cuba. The objections centered on its “excessive naiveté and an insufficiently revolutionary spirit,” per Film at Lincoln Center.
Kalatozov had already won the Palme d’Or for The Cranes Are Flying. Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko co-wrote the script for I Am Cuba, and Sergei Urusevsky handled the cinematography.
Yet it went largely disregarded and almost unknown for nearly 30 years.
Today, it holds a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from 40 critic reviews. Audiences nearly agree, with a 91% Popcornmeter from more than 2,500 ratings.
The site also ranks it No. 135 among its 300 Best Movies of All Time.
“Visually absorbing and formally audacious,” the site’s critics’ consensus read. “I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) opens a long-buried time capsule that has lost none of its captivating power.”
Nearly 30 years later, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola helped bring it back.
How Scorsese and Coppola Helped Rescue I Am Cuba From Obscurity
In Havana, moviegoers at the time dismissed its characters as inauthentic Cuban stereotypes, per Spectrum Culture. The film’s revival began at the Telluride Film Festival in 1992.
Film at Lincoln Center credits programmer Tom Luddy with the screening. Kalatozov, who died in 1973, did not live to see it.
Scorsese and Coppola then co-presented Milestone Films’ U.S. release in March 1995.
The Christian Science Monitor reviewed the film in December 1994, ahead of its wider U.S. release. Its critic ranked Kalatozov’s visual daring ahead of 95% of Hollywood’s big-budget effects work.
In December 1995, Roger Ebert marveled at the camera work in the film’s famous funeral sequence.
“As nearly as I can tell, this is all done in one unbroken take,” the renowned critic noted.
“How it was done, I have no idea. It is interesting not only for its technical skill, but also because it betrays a certain interest in la dolce vita that is not entirely in keeping with the movie’s revolutionary, agitprop stance.
The Criterion Collection has since released it on 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Box Office Mojo lists $168,100 in lifetime domestic grosses for Milestone’s release. Including later international re-releases, I Am Cuba reportedly earned a total of $278,788 worldwide.
Related: How Did John Wayne’s 1948 Classic Score a Perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes?
