The lively districts of the capital, celebrated throughout the world, were livelier than ever - Sloppy Joe's, the rendezvous of film stars, was chock full every evening, and the Floridita, Hemingway's favorite restaurant, still mixed the best daiquiris in the world. The public, however, had changed-...(Karol 21)
The preceding excerpt from K.S, Karol's Guerillas in Power describes the general attitude of the foreign presence in Havana at the very beginning of the Revolution. Karol is a French writer explaining his experience as a European in Cuba, and this particular passage perfectly describes the Western bourgeois image of Cuba at that time. On the surface, Cuba was a beautiful, third-world vacation for the European/American elite. American's shot movies on the tropical beaches and enjoyed Havana's clubs and restaurants during the evenings. Ernest Hemingway owned a home there where he preferred to do most of his writing, In Memories of Underdevelopment, Alea uses this aesthetic image of Cuba as the perfect parallel to the chaotic reality he portrays in the documentary segments of this film.
Halfway through the movie, the audience is introduced to Elena, Sergio's young, naive romantic interest. Elena is beautiful and innocent, and Sergio, who completely embodies the bourgeois ideology, has a relationship with her that is a metaphor for the European/American attitude towards Cuba. Elena, in essence, represents Cuba in its state of complete underdevelopment, and Alea conveys this to the audience most vividly in specific sequence of shots. The scene consists of Elena posing in a window of Hemingway's Cuban home. It is a segment of various still photos of Elena creating striking aesthetic images. With this cinematic strategy, Alea creates the impression that the public image of Cuba is like a vacation brochure. A series of beautiful photographs that mask the true state of the country. During another sequence of still photos of Elena earlier in the film, Sergio makes an important commentary. "Elena showed herself to be totally inconsistent. She doesn't relate to things. That's one of the signs of underdevelopment: inability to accumaulate experience and develop. ....It's difficult to find a woman here molded by feelings and culture. .... they always need someone to think for them." In this voice-over, Sergio is essentially speaking about Cuba. The images of Elena being photographed in Hemingway's house is the strategic formal method by which Alea interprets the relationship between Cuba and the "developed countries". Cuba is a beautiful island easily photographed for films and brochures, and the prefect island paradise for Hemingway to write.