Un día en el solar (1965)

Unfortunately, the choreographic skeleton at the beginning is like a West Side Story, only without criminals but rather neighbors from the lot's tenement yard. The characters move the hookah, yes; They put "candela", that is, fire of passion into the job to make the money and get ahead, I even admit that the steps of the couples and the troupes imitate the danzón without having the musical flavor of the tropics, but The mellifluous tone of brilliant happiness, especially knowing the enormous misery that Cuba is going through, despite being barely a couple of years old since Batista's overthrow and flight with millions, is extremely artificial. It is true that the sale of buckets of water, the women washing "doing the laundry" restore some neighborhood customs. When one sees the enormous background in which they dance, it is impossible to remember that Mexican muralism by Clemente Orozco or David Alfaro Siqueiros, but the script begins suspiciously cheerful and becomes corny just thinking about its absurdity, or at least contradictory correlation with the conditions. deplorables of the island. My favorite "number" is in -Le démon de l'aprés midi- the one between 12 and 3pm when it's hottest, and which highlights the mischief of the mulatto with the broom and the guy with the tumbao, almost a Pérez Prado, very good musical background with tones of danzón and son and the mantra "vipers fall from the roofs."