Non-narrated approach takes a handful of witnesses,
mostly workers at the run-down Riviera, and tracks their stories, which
illuminate Havana’s checkered past. Particularly interesting is a mustachioed
floorman who hung on long enough to become the hotel’s manager. He looks out
over the decrepit waterfront and recalls gangster Meyer Lansky (who kept a
whole floor as his command post) showing him a scale model of the Mafia’s
proposed casino wonderland, to be built on landfill. The revolution happened
instead.
Other old-timers recount ’50s visits from Frank
Sinatra, William Holden, Ginger Rogers and other guests of the mob, with one
former bellhop still rubbing his chin about the time Ava Gardner dragged him
into bed. Santo Trafficante, “the most paranoid man in Cuba,” is remembered for
showing up in a shiny new 1959 Cadillac — in 1958.
These walks down memory lane include the intense
relief felt when Batista and his Mafiosi pals were booted off the island. Hopes
for the future were quickly dashed for many, including one truck driver who —
with his face always away from the camera — recalls the torture sessions and
years he endured in the city’s fortress-like prison, simply because he drove
for a private cartage company while Castro was nationalizing Cuba’s economy.
Another subject is a black American who fled the U.S.,
apparently after killing a Texas trooper in a shootout. His effort to paint
himself as a political dissident is dubious (the cop, he says, was a racist
“for thinking he could pull a gun on three black guys”), and his life in
Havana, as an alcoholic document translator, doesn’t look very edifying.
Elsewhere, bused-in patriots carry Che placards and denounce the punitive
Helms-Burton act. Salsa-happy dancers and musicians, in the hotel and outside (including
some kids who knock out rhythms on cardboard boxes) are all terrific.
Helmer Bernie Ijdis, who last waxed political with the
epic-length, Indonesia-shot “Great Post Road,” lets his subjects guide the
talk, and they mostly come across as fascinating, thoughtful characters. In the
end, it’s hard to avoid drawing unhappy conclusions from the fact that the
kindly manager, a success by any Cuban standards, can afford only a tiny
apartment that he shares with three generations of his family.
And most memorably, while Eastern European tourists,
awash in new money, swim in the hotel pool, a haggard old groundskeeper bursts
into tears when a bicycle is stolen on his watch; it’ll cost 50 bucks to
replace — the same amount he earns in a year.
Riviera Hotel
PRODUCTION: A Pieter van Huystee Film & TV
production, in association with VPRO Television. (International sales: Fortuna
Films, Amsterdam.) Produced by Pieter van Huystee. Executive producer, Hetty
Krapels. Directed by Bernie Ijdis. Screenplay, Ijdis, Hans Dortmans.
CREW: Camera (color, 16mm), Stef Tijdink; editors, Jan
Dop, Puck Goossens; sound, Pieter Guyt, Piotr van Dijk; research, Ernestina van
de Noort. Reviewed at Vancouver Film Festival, Oct. 9, 1998. Running time: 82
MIN. (Spanish and English dialogue)
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