The Early Comedies of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

When Tomás Gutiérrez Alea1 began his filmmaking career, he alternated between serious, usually short, documentaries and hilarious, full-length fiction for the screen. Later, as he became more successful, acquired more resources, and articulated more clearly to himself and others his goals as a committed artist, Titón (as his friends called him) preferred to place within each of his films a dialectic of reality and entertainment. In his lifetime, he directed many important comedies, all of which display this back and forth between Brechtian distance and Chaplinesque empathy. His full-length comedies also fall into two groups. First came three black-and-white comic masterworks that combine hilarity and satire (Las doce sillas [1962; The Twelve Chairs], La muerte de un burócrata [1966; Death of a Bureaucrat], and Los sobrevivientes [1978; The Survivors]). The second group, filmed in color, exhibits irony attenuated by romance, and encompasses Hasta cierto punto (1983; Up to a Certain Point), Cartas del parque (1989; Letters from the Park), the short Contigo en la distancia (1991; Far Away), Fresa y chocolate (1994; Strawberry and Chocolate), and Guantanamera (1995; in English under the same title). His most important comedy would have to be Fresa y chocolate, an international success, only second in fame and importance to his serious, classic masterpiece, Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968; Memories of Underdevelopment).