Episode 732: Death of a Bureaucrat (1966)

Oh jee is folks, it's show. People say good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater, they are called sodorn and no masters. In a protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Can assume it is a forest.

You will tell you excel. So that's there. Who gives a prism parasuglia a proletariu se before the line combat contracts as first as cordass company of friends are cuts or the lad. Jo sa Al. Welcome to the projection booth.

I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again as mister Rob. Saint Mary, please fill in this form. Also back in the booth is mister Colin Gallagher. A thank you for letting it back.

We begin another month of fulfilling Patreon request with one from John Redford. Death of a Bureaucrat released in nineteen sixty six. The film was written and directed by Cuban filmmaker Thomas gutierres Alaya. The film tells the tale of a sculptor who created a wonderful machine for making busts. Unfortunately, the machine kills him.

As a tribute to his hard work, He's buried with his labor card. All too soon, his wife and nephew find out that the government won't provide his pension without the labor card. It's a cough casting nightmare that scares bureaucracy and petty tyrants that we will be spoiling as we go along. So if you don't know anything, Ruin, please go watch the film and come on back. We will still be here.

Colin. When was the first time you saw Death of a Bureaucrat and what did you think? So the too long didn't read is I saw it in fall two thousand and three and I absolutely loved it. The real story and the reason why I was really excited to be invited to be on this episode is that it is a very sentimental movie for me, and it coincides with my first friendship. When I moved to New York in fall of two thousand and three, I had been living in May.

I was lucky to have a video store that had a few New Yorker vhs by Louis Mall had had a couple Romera movies. I was so excited to move to New York to go to NYU and studied film, and it started off terribly. I didn't find a good crowd of friends, says like, why did I come here? And I had moved to the city with my band and the drummer was taking some audio engineering classes and said, I met this dude. His girlfriend likes.

Really weird movies. You should meet her. I think you guys would get along. And so I met Michelle and she was the embodiment of the perfect New Yorker for me, which meant she was from New Jersey and had started coming into the city in the sixties. She had an rent stabilized apartment in the village in nineteen sixty nine, somehow she was living in another hence stabilized place in the West Village.

In the seventies. She wound up in Italy and had been on the set of a top movie that Alan Delon produced. There's other stories I won't say on the air, but anyway, the first thing out of her mouth was have you seen the films of Tamascutier as a Lea? And I had never heard of them, and she started screaming that, of course NYU is never going to show me these movies. I'm going to rent from World of Video on Greenwach.

Come over, I'll make you dinner, and so we watched Death of a Bureaucrat and Memories of Underdevelopment back to back with a roast chicken, and for the first time I ever had roast onions, which are still one of my favorite foods. So this was a big night, new favorite food and two new favorite movies, and I loved both of them, but especially Death of a Bureaucrat. I never even heard of this guy, never heard of this movie. But here's this thing that is zany like. It's Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton.

It's anarchy and yet it looks like something that russill Leani would have made. It was such a literate movie with so many different styles seamlessly put together, and I was absolutely entranced. And Rob, does your first viewing include a succulent meal? How do you beat that story? I never heard of this movie, I'd never heard this director.

I watched it and was completely just enamored with it. As Colin says, it hits a lot of my sweet spots in terms of March Brothers in that kind of thing. But anyone who also shouts out Bunois has an influence in his opening credits is good in mind book and I just absolutely loved it, and at the same time it was confusing for me and not confusing in terms of the film itself, But how did this thing get made? Because I'm thinking, like, and granted I'm not a historian, I don't know a lot about Cuba. All I know is what's in.

The ether around me as an American about how Cuba is, and to me looking at this movie, going wow, this seems counter revolutionary. This kind of seems like something that would be upsetting to the government. But maybe it was part of Castro going Hey, you know what, we need less bureaucracy. We need things to flow a little smoother. So fine, go ahead and make this movie about the death of bureaucracy.

Sounds good to me, but it really hits a lot of the stuff that I really enjoy and I'm looking forward to sharing it with other people who feel like minded, much the way Colan talks about having been introduced to it by someone. I think this is one of those movies where those who are savvy should introduce others who are. I am very much in your boat here, Rob. I also did not have any sort of meal served to me while I was watching this. No roasted onions, which I also love.

But holy how, I am just so grateful to John Redford for requesting this. I had downloaded this movie forever ago. I must have seen a still or something and just the name of it, and oh it's a comedy, but it's called Death of a Bureaucradomy. Okay, yeah, sure, i'll do it. Let's check this out.

And I never watched it until I had to watch it for this episode. And I cannot express just how delightful this movie is and how much of a great time I had watching this. And yeah, I was also pretty confused about this whole thing where they are just skewing bureaucracy and the system, and I'm like, now, this seems like it's post revolution. I don't think they're setting this before. I was a fifty three when the revolution was happening.

I don't think that was before that. I think that this is contemporarily set. But I read this great chapter in a book called Humor in Latin America that Diane Martin wrote, and she was talking about her articles called the early Comedies of Tom Gutiani Sala, and she was saying that it's really a cultural thing in Cuba to basically take the piss out of other people and just to make fun of them mercilessly. And she's maybe that's how this gets through because I watched this one. I watch Memories of Underdevelopment.

I watched the twelve Chairs, and each one of them really takes the piss out of the system. But this one especially, I just had such a blast with this, especially to set up this uncle character, is this almost like hero of the revolution. He's making all these busts of Jose Marti, the Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, like one of these guys where he's a philosopher, essays, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, like this huge national hero. And here's this uncle making these busts. And to get the story of the uncle, this guy at this funeral who's giving the sermon and everything, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, I'm already laughing.

I'm laughing even at the opening credits. The opening credits are all set up like this amazing political document where it's like, whereas this and just walks you through this whole thing. And I'm noticing as I'm watching it again the other day, little animations that will show up like stamps will just appear on it. I'm like, okay, this is an interesting way of presenting this. And the way that the music cuts in and out and everything, I'm just like, okay, I'm in for a treat.

I don't know what this movie's going to be, but it keeps up. I think you use the word anarchy. The anarchy is throughout this whole thing, from beginning to end. It's amazing. So when you said music, I just wanted to interject.

I was thrilled watching this for the first time to see that Leo Brower did the score. I don't know if you all know his work. He is one of the leading class guitars schooled guitar composers. He has a piece called Danza Characteristica, which is like heavy metal riffage for classical guitar that is just so much fun to play and listen to. And I had no idea at the time that he was also part of the film industry.

So it's a real pleasure to watch a lot of the lay of films because they must have been buddies. They made several movies together. So y'all were wondering how he might have gotten away with his in mic. Thank you for pointing out that chapter is remarkable. I read that as well.

But Alayo was. Basically responsible for starting a film department, which the government post revolution, I think was in like fifty nine. He had studied in Italy in the early fifties and he did a lot of documentaries doubts social issues going on. One of his I think his first feature is Stories of the Revolution, which is incredible, and I think the second story in that is inspired by something with Sheaiy Guarvara and Shay. According to Elia, showed up on set and gave a technical advising about this is exactly where I did an ambush, this is how I did it.

But yeah, you're right. He has this aspect of. His work where he's criticizing not only the three communist government, but what's going on at the time. And I've read several interviews with him, and he says that it's really important to him for political reasons that even post revolution, you have to be critical of what's happening around you. You always have to be that's how the state can improve.

And it's really daring of him to include that in his work and it's it's powerful. In those opening credits, he dedicates the film to Louis Bonoil, Laurel and Hardy, Igmar Bergmann, Harold Lloyd, Kiri, Krisala, Orson Wells, Juan Carlos, Tabillo, Ilia Kazan Uster, Keaton, Jean Vigo, Mary or Jean Vigo, Marilyn Monroe, and I can't read the rest of it. Toto Sakiello's k De Manetta. Yeah, I won't go into that, but oh, and even I think it's like all the filmmakers from Lumier on up, and you can tell how literate he is when it comes to all this film. It makes sense to me now that you're saying he started this film department, because he's pulling from all of these great sources.

And that was another thing I liked about that article. Oh, in this case, he's walking along the edge and it's very Harold Lloyd, and I'm like, hey, I'm getting that, but I'm even getting a little barrov Check. It's very barv Check as far as the animation goes. And I know Barrovcheck was a major influence on Gillian because within five minutes I mentioned those little animated things and the credits, but you start off in the cemetery afterwards, and then you get all of these photos. You get newsreel footage with animated arrows pointing out where the uncle was.

Amazing shot of it looks like Castro speaking, and you get another arrow pointing, Hey, here's the uncle. And then you go into this amazing animated sequence where it's showing the uncle working this machine that's creating these busts. After he shows all the busts that are around town, and just this great sequence of the camera, like the image is shaking and you have these busts popping up out of this machine, and this animated version of the uncle like when the machine breaks down. It's just amazing. It also reminded me a little bit of Richard Elfman.

I was waiting for the Forbidden Zone soundtrack to start up when he starts messing around with this thing and goes inside. I was waiting waiting for like him to show up in the sixth dimension. Yeah, it definitely that's what I wrote down, I said Monty Python asker gilliamskin Thurs the animation because and that was the thing too, is I thought, oh, this is a real easy way to do it from a production standfow, so you don't have to build the actual machine, but then you actually get to see the machine later, which blew my mind. I was like, Wow, he actually built this thing. I thought it was only going to be Oh, here's my uncle in his magine kind of thing.

Yeah, I was surprised when that happened too, And it turns into some sort of again like Harold Lloyd Buster Keaton esque sequence where it's all belching smoke and you're just like, oh my god, get out of there, guys, it's going to explode. So when I was watching the animated sequence of the uncle getting killed, I kept thinking, we're at the point where we have insane cgi. But I kept thinking about like when I watched Hundreds of Beavers, or I'm watching this and I'm like, I know, you don't have one hundred million dollar budget, How the hell did you do this? And this movie? I'm like, you didn't have any.

Computers and in fact, like you barely had enough money for a film industry, literally, like how did you do just anime? So there's just something so beautiful and wonderful mysterious. About it, and it's also very gilliam esque. As far as the bureaucracy, I said kafka esque at the beginning. Of course, it reminds me of Kafka, and that's probably what's informing a lot of this, as well as I imagine some real life things.

We were talking before we started recording about the airline industry and just how messed up that is when it comes to credits and cashing in credits and all the things that you have to go through or can't go through because there's so many small rules, and you see this and just it so reminds me of Brazil. It reminds me of those sequences of Oh No. The inciting incident of Brazil is a dead flag gets in the teletype and screws everything up here. They bury the uncle with this labor card and that sets off this whole chain of events, and it just it's one of those movies that I just absolutely love, where it's Okay, this is screwed up, how's it going to unsort this? And then screw up something else?

And it just becomes that over and over through this movie. But the inventiveness of it just keeps you guessing and keeps you on the edge. Of your seat and keeps you. Sorry to use the phrase in stitches. Yeah, And part of it really is the reason why it is the way it is is because of everyone understanding I think within the system that they're working that if they don't follow things in the proper procedure, then they will be in trouble for doing so.

So there's an incentive structure for formality, and when you have rigidness, that's what it eventually leads to the humor and the madness. Because if someone could actually sit down and go, okay, let's take a minute, let's the use reason to figure this out, then the movie would be two minutes. But because people are afraid of their position, they're afraid of their something's going to happen if they go against doing a certain way. Then this is what leads to this kind of thing. It's just the manner in which any system operates.

And I think that although it is a Cuban film and it was made in the sixties, it's just as relevant to dealing with the American government, or dealing with the airline industry or your credit card company or whatever. Rob you make a really good point about the fear that a lot of these people have in this movie performing these roles and why they stick to how rigid it is, And something that I really appreciate on multiple viewings is just how straight most of the performances are. They don't seem to be acting like they're in an absurdist comedy, like they just everybody is just going about their business. No one's like exaggerating their performances. Nobody's acting crazy like it's no one's yelling for the most part, except for the big fights where they rip apart a car.

But it's just an to me, is this remarkable as how monotone and just a sedate just everybody eat is everyone's polite, just doing their thing and very slowly and silently going crazy until they snap at the end. Oh yeah, everybody wants to help, even when they're at the office trying to get the pension. You've got the one guy who overhears and he comes over and she says, oh, hey, no problem, you know, we'll get this sorted out. Let me take you over to the supervisor. And then you get this whole thing of everybody has their own agenda too, because the supervisor, while he's talking to them and trying to explain this whole situation.

He keeps looking out the window and looking inside of his office. At this I don't know if it's the same woman, but there's a woman outside the window. He looks across the courtyard and sees her, and he's very interested in her. And then at one point, I don't know again if it's the same woman or a different one comes in and he puts on his glasses just checks out her ass big time. Okay, this is what this guy is very interested in.

He's not interested in really helping these people out because he's got all these rules that he has to follow. He's awful, but I think the people at the cemetery are even worse when they try to go in and exhume the body, and it just becomes this whole thing of all you have to get this order, and you have to go here and get this information. It's this labyrinth. And I love that we keep revisiting these spots because you'll think he's got something for these people, and then he has to move over and get something for these other people, and then they send him back over. And I just love this kind of wild chase that he's on through this whole thing, just trying to get stuff done and never really accomplishing anything.

And what I really love about it too, is that it is one small thing, and he even says he's like, look, I'm not here to assume the body. The whole thing is he's got to get this exzoom form. No, I just want to open the coffin, take the card out, then put everything back. That's all I want to do. And they're like, we don't have a form for that.

We have no way to help you, so we're going to get you the next closest thing. And then it forces him into a scenario where it's the bureaucracy doesn't work the way I wanted to, so I have to figure out an illegal way to do it. Before we even get to the illegal thing. I wanted to pause for a second because, Mike, the scene you mentioned where someone comes over and says, oh, we should talk to the boss is one of my favorite moments because at that point the person who is sitting down, who was not being helpful, suddenly goes, wait. Why don't we just ask Alejandro?

And in the background you realize that there's this guy with a white beard who's just sitting there and he like path stands up like he here's his name, and he's confused, and then it's no, this isn't for Alla Hunter, this is for the Big Boss. He doesn't quite sit down. But to me, that's actually one of the things that I love most about the style of this movie, which is Lay's use of long shots. He basically frames everything where you can see people's entire bodies because he's really emphasizing people in environments and so it looks like a documentary in so many ways, and it really makes that guy, the protagonist, the nephew, feel so lost, because if you filmed all this in close ups and cutting back and forth like it would get a little it would seem a little too Intimately, I think that distance really helps emphasize the absurdity and like the horror of this, and also the scale.

Like you were talking about call up. Maybe this is for Alejandro. We don't know exactly what he does, but we get the idea that he's part of the system in some way and he's maybe been waiting through the day that they're going to call him forward to do something. But the later there's this thing where it's like you need to go to table, you'd go talk to age whatever twelve, then you got to go to forty seven. So you get the idea that this is just a massive thing.

This isn't just one guy in a room making decisions. This is his system. It's a structure. This is the parallel to the machine. You could say, okay, the bust making machine, like it creates good things.

We like the busts that the machine creates, but it also killed this guy. Do you think Jacques Tatis sawvice because with all the especially up the office up that you're talking about, where you go from table to table, I kept thinking of playtime, but that comes out the following year. But there is this sort of sense of architecture and space that's so important Tati. That is very important to this film as well. Well, this is the same year, isn't it as the trial or smells the trial where you've got those deaths that go on forever, and that's literal kafka with something like that.

And I love the little nuances in here where you get almost like little I don't know, like law breakings or something like the first guy that they talked to trying to get the pension at one point, he bends over and he's like eating a little bit of food at his desk, and I'm just like, Okay, that's probably not allowed. So he's doing it very surreptitiously. And the nephew, I'm going to continue to probably call him the nephew through this whole thing, but I think his character's name is what Wan Cheetah or something little Wan, almost the Juanito, but it's close to that. But he goes in and he's at the big boss desk and there's a cannon pointed right at him, this little cannon on the desk, and he moves the cannon put me out of the line of fire.

And then when the boss starts talking, he moves the cannon back. I'm just like, oh, that's nice. Like the little things like that, the people who really are the ones that are doing the actions compared to the bureaucrats who are stopping the actions. Like when he goes to the cemetery and there's the guy with the huge sickle who's just standing there or sorry, sitting there waiting for stuff, and I'm like, okay, at a cemetery, a guy with the sickle, all right, I like this, or you get those moments at the cemetery too, when he's talking to the woman about how he can get this exhumation order and she starts rolling through the rules and it becomes so much that they just give a close up of her mouth and it's sped up to ridiculous amount when she's talking to him, and you can just get that I'm completely lost, I have no idea what's happening right now.

And I love his reactions. His reactions are so great, and he plays this so well because he does have to be very quiet and very respectful for everything. There's very few times where he just loses a shit. The whole thing with stealing stealing his uncle, he's like, all right, fine, we'll just steal him and then we'll put him back in. And so that becomes a big set of second plot because who are these guys that they're the mortuary workers, which that whole scene is so bizarre because when he goes there for the first time, there's just some guy with the sky it's just sitting there.

It's like seventh Seal or something. It is waiting around. I'm def who needs me, And then he meets those guys and they go to a cafe. They seem a little taken a backwards. We're professionals, of course, we know how to do this.

And then the waiter lashes of vampire teeth, and then when it cuts back to them, the guy's trying to light a cigar and the match explodes spontaneously. It's just such like a weird one two of the edit because you don't expect the vampire teeth. Then it cuts back and you're waiting for their reaction to the teeth, and then you get this explosion and then the scene's over. It's such a strange way of editing audio, but I love it, and it's so unexpected, and it does happen again when they're the. Worst thieves in the world.

The way that they're trying to break into I can't say it's a coffin, It's like a mausoleum or something. And the way that they all the bodies are out there and dropping their tools and making so much racket is, oh my god, could you be any louder guys? And then at the same time they're trying to be sneaky, and then the owl keeps making noise, and then there's some kind of dopey security guard who's going around others at least two different layers of Okay, they're gonna get caught. Is the owl going to screech at him? You know?

Like the security guard thinks that the coffin might be like a ghost, like pushing it, because you just see this coffin barreling full speed ahead and he just runs away. He's total cowered. Maybe that's the like a Renee Claire thing, because there's a bit of a runaway coffin and un trucked. Yeah, there's just so many film references in this movie. And I don't normally sped up stuff, but they use it very well in this when that coffin is barreling down, and the way that the timing is with the guy opening up the gate and the coffin coming through, because it could have crashed right into that cemetery gate, but he's trying to open that up very quickly and the cemetery the coffin just goes gone through.

And yeah, now we have a new problem because we have a dead body at the ant's house. We got the card finally. But now yeah, so this becomes all right, what are we gonna do with the body. Now and then the dogs follow him home. How does he explain, Auntie, I've got the card?

How did you get it? That poor aunt character, she just faints throughout so much of this mood. I really do appreciate at the end, towards the end, there is a really tender moment between the two of them when she's chopping up the ice to put in the coffin and he takes some of the ice for a drink and she I think at that moment the film shifts from her being a comic relief to being like she has a tender moment where she follows her nephew out of the room and they embrace and she gives him the drink. But it doesn't feel like a joke at that point. That's like the two of them really feeling the gravity of we have to deal with this horrible situation for the death of the loved one.

I really appreciate a Leah giving that little moment of reality and what is essentially NonStop surreality. Yeah, the pace of this film is fantastic. There's no lulls in here whatsoever. It just moves. It's almost what's the next thing that he has to overcome, just constantly throwing things in his way, and you never know what the next thing is going to be, And of course you can see some things coming where you're just like, oh shit, he's going to dig up that body.

And then I didn't realize he was going to get stuck with the corpse. And then's oh shit, now, how's he going to get the corpse in the ground? Like how does this be? For? How's he actually going to get the pension now?

And I love too, I forgot that. The pensioner's office, they were talking about how the uncle was buried, and the guy makes a real point to say that the bearying is done because of tradition or something, but there's no religious implications whatsoever. He has to very strenuously say that religion is basically outlawed at this time in Cuba. It's just like, but there's no religious implications of why we buried this person. See why?

So then the cops show up the next day at the cemetery, and this was the thing that really, like I was talking about before, if you're not making fun of the state already direct beating up the cops, getting in a fight with cops, I'm like wow, okay, And. For all intents and purposes, I know they start fighting, and you mentioned the car and how there's the incident about the car, and that starts to get bigger and bigger, and pretty soon this scene turns into a full scale riot and they're throwing flowers at each other at one point, but it might as well be pies, because this seems like a pie fight. I think there is shaving dream being thrown by the barber, thank you. One of my favorite little bits of choreography in this massive fight between the people that were going to bury the body and then the mortition that seems to let them.

They're trying to rip the book, and then a soldier shows up and there's a one two where he gets hit by a two doors. Someone opens a cardroom. He gets hit once, then he starts to fall backwards. Another opens and he hits his head. Then he's on the ground.

To add insult to injury, when he gets up, the barber throws some shaving cream. It goes through a window and hits a woman ironing, so she throws her iron out the window. So of course that. Hits this soul sure hits and then later the head mortician just when you think the riot is quelled, throws a range and says and don't come back, and it hits who else but this soldier. As I noted here about this cemetery, they really do put the fun back in funerals.

So there you go. Gosh, the guys that drive the hearse have a little dangling skeleton from their rear view mirror. Lauren loved that little detail when we were watching it the other night. Yeah, I wrote down here makes the food fight and animal House look like mister Rogers neighborhood. I kept thinking about Shalini.

In the midst of all this mayhem, there are the shots of the people that are trying to actually do a funeral, and there's this woman like carrying flowers, very mournful, completely oblivious to what's. Going on around her. And then the big Scholini touch. You have the marching band and the conductor trying to keep everybody in rhythm, and then all the mayhem and shaving creams being thrown on the musicians and they're still doing the That whole thing is, especially with the march type music. I kept thinking about.

Nino wrote to my favorite is the shot of the little dog that has a femur and it's running out. Who's missing that bone? That's your U jimbo reference, right. And those guys who work for the cemetery how they're like, oh, sorry, we couldn't bury the body, but here, maybe try this, and they hand him a card that says Mumias tutan kamon song. It turned us, so it's go to this mummification expert.

He'll help you out. It really is a movie that rewards so many multiple viewings because there's so many. Things happening so fast. This is just one of the things that I love too, is just the scenes where people have half the information that they're confused about what's happening because they don't really know what's happening. And they're like, oh, Paco, he's in the house.

It's what he died again, How strange. No, we're trying to get him read married. It's ah. Is that when they're having the vigil with the family and that the neighbors come over. So in the background after the line oh did he die again, there's a woman who like peers into the coffin, looks up at him and nods again.

His use of space is I wish I could remember there was summary newer piece of criticism that said that style wasn't important to a Lea I wish I had written down. But I'm like, there's so much style in all these shots, and there's such a diversity of different styles. You're really a master who understood film language and genre. And how to do it all. The thing that's funny that you say that there's no style or he didn't care about style, that's the same thing that you hear.

And then I'm gonna transition this to a bunwell asque a reference here is that's what Bunol used to get hit with. Oh he has no style. This stuff is very flat. Maybe he's not doing pyrotechnic camera work, but he in terms of the way you set things up and the way things are edited and the way the story's told. Yeah, like you can tell that you're watching, like you were saying, you can tell that you're watching a buonoell film or a Fellini.

Film or things like that. So anyway, the whole thing with him having this dream of a nun and the coffin and I was like a very a shin andelou, very lush door. And then dumping the coffin off into the ocean. Yeah, when he's pulling the nun and he's got the two ropes around him and those wooden black herds and stuff, I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is when the bishops are being pulled and owned shim the andelou And I love the kind of wavy thing that he's doing in front of this to really let you know that this is a dream, as if these images weren't surreal enough. And I think it's the first of two dream sequences that we get in here, and the other one is pretty buonuell as well.

Yeah, with the whip and then he takes the gun and then the gun blows air to shoot out the candles, and pretty. Soon we're introduced to his boss, and ironically his boss I believe it's mister Ramos is his name. The boss is also very He creates nationalistic art as well, but he does it in his own way, and he's got a whole group of guys that work for him and they create this basically, it's all propaganda stuff. And I love this character and how he gets the brunt of so much. As we're going through the rest of the film, especially when it comes to his affair and his secretary and the way that he will sign off on things and he'll sign whatever.

Basically the nephew puts in front of him and he's just like, oh, you need that, okay, and he says and even signs the wrong piece of paper. But I think at the end it really doesn't matter. They just needed a signature. It didn't matter who the hell was side. This is another part of it too for me, where it felt like I was saying counter revolutionary, because if you have a guy whose job it is to make revolutionary posters and art and propaganda, but she is the most Western capitalistic, going to nightclubs growing around house that seems to run completely counter to what the revolutionary.

It almost seems like she would have lived well in the old Havana. You would have gotten along well with the protagonist. And Memories of Underdevelopment too, does go to all the nightclubs. The boss also at one point says to the nephew, oh, stop talking about drunkle. He can't do anything anymore.

Okay, he's been dead three days. He was such a good worker that he buried him with his card. But okay, that was three days. Ago, move on. He's no longer productive.

So much for remembering the great people of the best agent history. And I like how he just stops because he's obviously trying to hope that the secretary looks but he'll just selects his arm in front of his employees hoping that they'll admire him. Yeah, it's like he's some sort of almost a Stalinist ideal, but I don't know if they were going for that in this one. But this is also around the time that we get introduced to the whole idea of labeling things, because you have the one guy who's working on this new artwork for the revolution, and it's an octopus and it's got labels on its arms like General Motors, Mexican Steel, and United Fruit, so one of my favorite companies. And there's a whole thing about United Fruit that we could get into, but that is labeling these arms on this octopus.

And then pretty soon you were talking about that scene where he has to go from the table to table. He has to put out a thing to go around his neck that has his name I think, or it's a number. It's a number, so he gets numbered, and even those women at that nightclub. I don't know, but I was looking at one side of them and it almost looks like they had numbers on their sides. And this whole idea of labeling things becomes our numbering things becomes this whole thing throughout the rest of the film, And I'm like, how clever is that to start it with this labeling of this octopus and then move on to basically make him such a cog in the wheel that he doesn't even have a name anymore.

He's just a number being moved from table to tape. It's a really good point, and I think it's also. In this sequence with the mister Ramo's character where we start to see the smash bureaucracy or death to bureaucracy. Death bureaucracy posting, Yeah, where that. Will keep coming up and coming up until it's featured so prominently, especially at the end of the movie, and just.

Him in the various going from table to table. He's in this, you know, department of paperwork and then just drowning in the paper. Just the idea of the system is so anti human. It's gone just out of control in that way. Like I'm reminded of another movie this a few years later, but even to warf started small.

Oh yeah the Herzog, and Herzog said that when he was asked why did he cast this movie with little people, he said, let's just show that the world that we live in has gotten out of scale. That we're all living in this world that's out of scale, and it's no longer at human scale. So I get the feeling with this too, to a certain extent, although they're not played by little people. Even the desks you're talking about, where he goes from desk to desk, it's dehumanized because there's a zeppelin that like goes around up top dropping little notes, and it's you can't even walk over to give a note to somebody. It really emphasizes is how alien this environment has become.

I have that at work. I have people who would rather send me a message through a company chat than walk over to my. Desk a conversation. I'm guilty of that. It depends on the employee of the conversation.

Yeah, you don't want to look like you're talking all day, even though you are talking all day. This meeting could have been an email. This email could have been a fist fight, and if this fist fight slash email slash meeting probably never needed to happen. Just leave me alone, Just push the paperwork through. You come to the one guy at that office, and there's this whole thing with glasses.

I talked about how the one guy was checking out the woman's ass and looking across the way, like how he has to put on the glasses to enjoy the view. And there's one guy that gets table number forty six where he can only see him when he puts on his glasses and takes the glasses off, and then he takes that piece of paper and at first I thought he was like ripping it up, but he's tearing a piece off of it. It takes the longest time for him to tear this piece of paper apart, and just he's so careful about it. It makes it so painful because you just the nephew just needs this thing. Just give him the signature, give him the stamp, give him the slip of paper, let's hurry this thing up.

And instead it just becomes his chainstaking process. I think it's somewhere around here where he goes to another office and it's what lunchtime or something, and as soon as the bell rings, the guy's about to sign it or stamp it. As soon as that bell rings. It's okay, well works over. The worst part about that is he should have been the previous person in line, but he walks up to the desk and the guy says, no, go to the end of the line.

So he walks all the way through one room, through another room, around the room, and he's about to get at the back of the line, but there's someone carrying a huge pile of papers, so he steps back and is a nice guys, all let you step ahead of me, And while the guy is putting the papers down, someone slips in and cuts him off, and there's just that sense that, oh, that guy just hadn't done that, he would have gotten that stamp. And then of course that leads to him now once again resorting to illegal means, and he hides in the office to get the stamp, and for one things seem to be working out, except now he's locked in the office and has to go on the ledge and cue the herold Lloyd reference. And I love him hiding in the closet while the janitor comes in for some stuff and he's got the broom hidden over his face is just Hey, mean they're so natural?

What that? Mike, Why do you give me these movies about people hiding in closets because this was happened in the Burglar movie with Whoopie Goldberg, and then later he's going to be stuck in another closet in this movie watching his boss and the secretary, because if that didn't have happened anything, if he would not have gotten the signature. At least the secretary didn't kill the boss in this one, the all important one. I love when he does break back to the guy's desk and he's stamping it with every single stamp that's on this person's desk, and basically by him doing that, it starts to look like those opening credits. It starts to look like that title sheet where it's like, whereas this movie and all of those legal things that are going past us for those opening credits, and the room that he hides in before he goes out onto the roof, I'm just like, where is this?

It feels like he's exploring all of these rooms that have been abandoned with this stuff, and Robi, you're talking about the whole idea of the little people in even Dwarf started small, and I love that. Around this point is also where we get the first really high angle shot, because we have him and we have people looking up at him, and that's too often as he's trying to crawl across the roof and get into an open office, and that starts this whole panic of all these people running into the building trying to find this guy, which is very similar to and we'll talk a little bit more about this later The Twelve Chairs is a very similar moment in that, but when he picks up a garbage can and just starts walking down, hiding behind the garbage can, much like he had the broom.

And when he goes out into the main courtyard, you get the one person who recognizes him from all the way up there, which was pretty great. And then you get that high angle shot of all the people just swarming to him and throwing him in the back of the ambulance for him to be taken to the psych ward. What is the Buster Keaton movie where all the brides to be or chasing because they want to marry him? Is that, Devin Chances? Maybe I think it is.

Yeah, Usually that's what I kept thinking about seeing that wonderful, extreme long shot of dozens of people just chasing after him. He ends up in the psych ward not once, but twice. Right, I've found this once because it's almost like proto clock records. They're putting the strobe light in his face, torturing this pook huh. And then when his boss comes to get him out, they show him all those Warshoch tests, and when he's looking at the Worshock tests, he's seeing things that we've seen earlier in the movie, even though they're not there.

It's just fantastic, and I love that he's so obsessed that he's seeing those things in those ink blots. So at this point he has the signature. No, he doesn't have the signature, he has the stamp. He is out of the psych word. He goes back and at this point the head mortician that I can't help you because I'm too busy working, and so the secretary has to help them, and it is just missing that one signature, and the boss refuses to make an exception.

So that's when he goes home, and that's when the aunt says, why don't you just talk to your boss? You need to lean into him. More he can really help you out, and then that's what leads to the nightclub scene, right, I think. So, yeah, when we really get to see the true colors of the Boss and all of those very Afro Cuban dancers and they're basically dressed up like little slave girls in this nightclub act. The music was amazing.

I really enjoyed that, but I was just like, boy, this seems really off color with the way that this show was performing. And in some of the other movies he made around this time, there's a lot of criticism of racism in Cuban society. There's a Sumbte I think he made right before this, and it's about a Haitian man who returns and they're like, oh, why are you back, and he's too much racism in Cuba and they I don't think they say what year it is. So there's also this sort of ambiguity. It's this pre or post revolution.

Those dancers that we see, there's maybe just a few darker guys that are in this. There's one he goes in and it's the first time we see the death to Bureaucracy poster. We get all those guys. I'm guessing that this is at the boss's office, because they're wearing like these little goofy hats and they're just like, I think those are supposed to be some sort of propagandistic tool as well. But then it's you know, we need these the posters where we teat, And there's that woman who's in the bikini with the hammer and all of the guys just checking her out as she's going across, and just she has no problem just coming into this room, coming up onto this desk, and she's got that.

I mean, it does look like a bikini, but there's like the long straps going around. It's almost like a little like a bondage outfit. Or something suspenders. This whole scene had a very big granted he was just doing shorts then, but as a very kind of Bob Downey feeling like a Putney Swape kind of ideas, what are you selling here? Now?

Are you selling it? So he used to work in advertising, and I wonder if he was maybe using some inspiration from his days, because he said after a year or two he couldn't take it anymore. He had to get out. There's a lot of vitrils to some of this this movie that's two guys then, who made the film kind of making fun of propaganda or advertising in that same era, because Downey did the same for a while. I love when he's coming home at one point and can see all the vultures that are circling the house and he walks up and he sees this axe going up and down.

You almost expect the psycho music, but it's his inside cutting up the ice like you were talking about, because yeah, we got to preserve this body because we want the vultures to get to it. We don't want the wild dogs of Cuba to get to it either. She again, she's pretty cool in this scene as far as oh yeah, I'm just gonna cut up this ice and keep Paco cool while we're trying to get this body reburied. She's a lot of fun. I really wish there was a little bit more for her to do.

But the nephew just carries this movie so well. The weight of this and the looks on his face. He does have that mastery of silent comedy, because he definitely obviously talks throughout this, but so much of this movie just relies on his reactions to things. A lot of the faces in this movie, I kept not only thinking about silent comedy, but I kept thinking about Eichenstein. So feel like he loved people's faces and people often played types, and so much of Death of a Bureaucrat is very much about types more than individual psychology.

Even the doctor at the psych hospital, he's another great one. He almost looked like a young Martin Lando or something. But he just keeps blinking like crazy when he's talking with the boss, and I'm just like, what is this guy's problem? They never really explain it, but he just blinks wild while he's talking with the boss. And then yeah, I love how he escapes from the boss's bedroom just by walking through andermiso, he says, and then they it's almost immediate that they cut to the next day with him walking into the boss's office saying the exact same thing, And I was just like, that's pretty risky.

Did the boss hear? You know? The boss was so engrossed and being the wonderful lover that he is that he didn't hear the nephew come through. And then he meets again the secretary and there's a little bit of back and forth between them, and I love how the secretary is bringing the boss a little espresso, but by now the nephew's so upset that he takes the espresso and just drinks it himself because he's just at wits end. Coming very close to the end of the movie with him going back to the cemetery.

He's got everything now that he needs except for that darn signature. This is where he gets it. The boss just signs, just like the bosses. Doesn't matter, you just need a signature. I'm solving problems, I'm bossing.

Is it what bosses do? He goes back to the cemetery and the guy still won't budge on it. And I thought that the uncle was the bureaucrat who had died. Obviously we start at a funeral, but no, it's actually the nephew killing the guy who runs the cemetery. But I'm the bureaucrat accused of him of vampirism and necrophilia.

You took the body with no permission? What are you doing? A vampire? Necrophilia? And that wonderful shot it's behind it's off screen when he goes behind this angel statue that we saw at the very beginning.

We had all these beautiful shots of these angel statatues and a murder this guy. That's why I was saying he was taken off to the psych ward a second time, because there's another ambulance that shows up and pulls him into that. And then you get the shot of the old Chinese guy who just says this never would have happened in China, and I'm like, oh, okay, is this the whole Cuban communism versus Chinese communism? That's what I kept thinking out. French of a movie I saw didn't have a subtitle for that.

I watched the New Yorker Films VHS, so I was curious what he said. Yours probably had a little bit better of subtitles because mine. Every time he was talking about the uncle, he said dude. Yeah, because they said dude, and I was like, no, he said TiO. He didn't say dude, he said uncle.

Yeah. There were some weird translations. But this guy, this never happened in China. That just reminds you of that's been done in so many comedies, where there's always someone who's yeah, bet, I don't know. For some reason, I have like something about Mary.

It's never what happened to woogi, just some guy commenting just never would happen there. I love how the movie ends with basically almost two funerals going on, because you have the funeral of the bureaucrat, and you get to see the lovely procession of the horses that are draped in black and have the ornate head pieces, and the beautiful coffin, and the carriage that the body is in, and all these people walking behind and crying. These are all these very familiar faces of all these other bureaucrats that we've seen through there, including the woman from this cemetery. And then meanwhile you've got the ant. They finally have come to take away the body, and she's running after the vehicle that has that, and she's just trucking through downtown Havana.

It looks and that again, it looks like it's a little sped up. So she's just trucking after this car and looks like she's not even a human being anymore. The system will drive you to murder. The system will drive you to madness. The other thing that I wrote here I put in brackets is libertarian comedy Allah Ghostbusters, But it's those government people.

They'll drive you crazy. Every time now, But if you've reached the end of the movie, I forgot to mention one of my favorite bases at the very beginning, as soon as the credits end, there's the flush of the toilet on the soundtrack. I also like the placement because it's right when the credits cut to the statues of the babies and angels at the cemetery. Is that flush supposed to be for the credits or is this for the angels and the cemetery which blasphemy? Is this about the people who made the movie or the religious setting at the cemetery.

Very irreverent, juvenile soundtrack, but loved it. And that lovely end shot through the gates of the cemetery with the mourner still going, and then the Finn comes up and it's that same typewritten face that we saw from those opening credits. Everything in this movie seemed so well conceived and well executed, and just it feels there's no nothing is just a throwaway kind of thing. It feels like all of this was meant to be in this film. Well, Leia seemed to be a multi talented person, and he was a musician.

There's a really good documentary called Titon. His nickname is on the Criterion addition of members of Underdevelopment and is also on the streaming site, but it shows him his office he drew. He was an artist as well, so he seemed to have a real command for a lot of the different elements that would go into cinema. Obviously, he did some documentaries and things and short films, but was pretty quick to come to making features. I think, like you said, Stories of a Revolution in nineteen sixty was one of the first ones that he did.

I did not see that one, but I did watch The Twelve Chairs, which was funny because I had been wanting to rewatch the mel Brooks film The Twelve Chairs for a long time, and then I was reading more about this one and reading that it really because the thing about The Twelve Chairs that I liked about the mel Brooks one was that it's set during the Russian Revolution, but it really feels like this one. The Aliyah film takes more of that revolutionary setting and this whole idea of this kind of disgraced bourgeoisie and then matching him with a proletariat who looks a lot like the nephew. But it's different actor. I had to look the shed up and pairing them together. So it's the have and the have not, and the two of them trying to work together to find this one chair out of a dozen that his grandmother, the bourgeoisie person's grandmother put all of her jewels into this chair.

And it becomes this mad race. And again it's fast motion animation, just all of these techniques to tell this story, and it just gets sillier and sillier as you go along, and more and more again roadblocks being thrown in front of these guys. But gosh, it works so well and might be one of the better adaptations of this story. I'd only seen the mel Brooks one before this, and yeah, I was blown away. I loved the animation at the beginning.

I thought the interplay of the two actors was quite good. The gardener who is, okay, i'll help the person who used to own this house. I'll help the enemy so I can get these chairs in this money. And they're very funny together. Yeah, it's really inventive camera work.

Again, like you said, I love the different styles, even working in and he loves to work with stopped footage from the Revolution and he's reels at different points. Rob, did you have the chance to see any of Aleia's other work now? I haven't seen any, but definitely seeing this one makes me want to see the rest of it. They're terrific. Kumbite he made after the Twelve Chairs, which I mentioned, is very different.

It feels more like Cinema Novo. I think it actually might be an adaptation or inspired by a glob or Rocha mousie. But it's about this man who leaves Cuba because of racism and returns to Haiti and finds that his village is going through a drought and there's a blood feud between his family and a neighboring family over land, and he's come up with this plan to try and dig a you know, irrigation system to bring water to the town, and he has to try and bring the two families together. You have to get to the end. Not much humor to it's this is more like the I kept think of it, not only Cinema Nova, but like Pather Panchali and sachiashit Ray.

It seemed very realist mode. Else did I see? I did see the early short Esteteria Nuestra, which he filmed with Julio Garcia Espinosa, who they and they had met in Italy. And I think that was filmed right around when the revolution happened, because it has to do with all the sugar plantations taking the land and keeping it away from people. That seemed much more in the propaganda spirit, but still very well filmed, and Memories of Underdevelopment is probably the easiest one to see.

Easiest to see this in terms of availability, because it blows my mind that death of Bureaucrat is not easy to find, Like how did Criterion that do in a clips box set of these early films. This really seems like somebody has dropped the ball looking up the Memories of Underdevelopment on Criterion channel streaming. It's part of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Projects, so maybe that's why Scorsese sure in some ways it actually is similar to The Twelve Shares and that the main character is someone who is an intellectual. He was a landlord. He made his living renting apartments to other people, and everyone that he knew, including his wife, left when the revolution happened and he decided to stick around.

And what's really odd about that movie is Elaya goes starts using footage from newsreals, including some that he made, and has this character narrating them. But he's not really pro revolution. He's like outside of all of this. And it's a fascinating and really complicated work of cultural criticism because the main character is someone who really is like persona non grata in Cuba at the time, and as the movie progresses, they take away his apartment so that he gets interviewed like, so, how do you make your money and he's ohm a landlord illegal apartments is what they write down. And it's a really fascinating movie.

It is a dark comedy, but it's definitely not like slapstick at all, and it's I feel weird saying it's a comedy, but that element of cultural criticism that you can see in the twelve it's like, this is like the flip side of it, and that's terrific. Afterwards, it's the next one he did, oh, a Cuban fight against Demons. It's set in the sixteen hundreds and it's about some like crazy like religious leader that thinks that demons are coming to attack him and so he's trying to convince the other colonizers to move to another part of the island they don't really want to. And then there's one landowner who, you know, kind of rebels and people keep having these like moments in church where they claim to be possessed.

It's absolutely wild, but it's that's terrific. And then the last one I saw was The Survivors from seventy nine, which is his version of a Exterminating Angel by Boone, and this one it's about a bunch of a couple families that when the revolution happens, they decide to just stay inside the house and ride out the revolution, and it slowly their world crumbles and it gets to the point where they're like staging shake like fox hunts in the house. Maybe that's what made me start looking at Members of Underdevelopment like as a dark comedy, because he keeps coming back to these characters that refuse to adapt to changes that are happening and just clinging to the past so desperately. It's funny that you mentioned that, because when I was looking at the film he made in seventy six, The Last Supper, a pious plantation owner attempts to teach Christianity to twelve of his slaves, by inviting them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper.

I was like, Oh, I wonder if that's very Boonellan, because I think of the shot the reenactment of the of the Last Supper that Boonwell did with all of the beggars, and I'm like. Yeah, Verdiana, it's not old thing in Verdiana. Yeah. The thing that seems to be the tie between them are people who are very much used to manners, they used to society operating in a particular way. I think is the core of what Boonwell was really making fun of at times was that people got stuck into these manners of being and they either can't or won't adapt because either the world has moved on or the people around them have moved on but they haven't.

Then they end up in this cycle of madness. Even the last two films that he made were highly praised, between Guantanamira in ninety five and then Strawberry and Chocolate in ninety three, And I haven't seen either of those two yet, but I do remember that Strawberry and Chocolate as a gay character, which is pretty revolutionary. Part of the pun in ninety three, especially being made by a Cuban filmmaker. And you're right, Colin, looking at all of these movies and all of them have these box covers that are New Yorker Video, and it's just come on, New Yorker Video, either release these rights or let's get new versions of these out here, because these these are fantastic. I don't think New Yorker is around anymore.

That was Dan and Toby Talbot, and Dan has passed away. Because they owned so many Oshima titles, and okay, these were available legally and somewhat easy to get because I remember seeing a lot of these covers, like for Asta Siero Punto. I can remember that sitting at the video store that I used to go to, the same one, Rob when we were talking about Weekend, I think it's the same one where I rented Weekend from. Well, speaking of Weekend, yeah, I remember the first time I saw that was a New Yorker, which was a lot of those early good Dard films are Also, the Talbots were incredible with everything they were able to release over here, and then they ran the New Yorkers for not the New Yorker's Theater, the Lincoln Plaza.

They used to run. Dan has a memoir. I haven't read it yet. Yeah, I definitely want to explore more of these Alia films. And now that you say that The Survivors is very exterminating, Angel, all throw that into the drop box Rob, so we can watch that and in preparation for our episode about that later this year.

Are you doing a whole doing well nonths No. Just a particular one. We've got Rob who sometimes likes to talk about Boon Well, and then we've got Miguel Janso coming on that episode, so I'm excited for that one. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for bringing me in on this, because at first I was like, I'm talking about one I've never heard of this movie.

Yeah, there's always that fear of the unknown because I don't know. This could be the most boring movie in the world. But instead it was so freaking funny and made so many good points. I really want to thank John Redford for picking this as this Patreon pick, because otherwise I might have slept down this movie, and I'm so glad I didn't. As soon as I saw this, I reached out to Morris Brashtinski, who did the big dig episode with me, which is somewhat similar.

It's this whole idea of there's a guy who has jack hammer and he starts digging up the street, and it becomes this whole bureaucratic mess of who let this guy do this? And as that is going on, then it becomes, oh, this is a real thing, and somebody else must have given this order. We need to support this guy until basically he breaks through a wall and floods all of Tel Aviv, and then they're like, oh, this is a triumph. We now our canal city like Venice Will. When he introduced me to that movie, Mike, I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of that movie before.

It's it is amazing all of the people that turned down to these titles. I just can't think them enough. It's some really great things that we've been able to talk about over the last few years. All Right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break and we'll be right back after these brief messages. Nina Max.

No Ye. Or let to Massive now leg Le Massive Figure, the La Prima Kay Lady. Miche Gene, Gina No Mi Amica Americano, Michael Stopdiva, Lultimus Pranza, Depassion and Mondos and Moviemento mondale almost as well. Kay, Michael Stophon philosophy. No, yes, you got me.

You know you can under start. Mas Jack. That's right. We will be back with a discussion of Love Circle or mete Unsea Achena. Until then, I want to thank my co host Colin Rob.

Rob. What's the latest with you? Like I said, it's been fun to be on here more than I have in the past few years. Things have calmed down a little bit in my life. But at the same time, I think the last episode I was on, I said I was writing a novel.

I've now finished it. So we've got a first draft one hundred and four thousand words. Yeah, there's a lot of editing, but I'm letting it rest. I'm gonna let it sit for a couple of months and then I'll get to it maybe later in spring. And and then give it an edit.

See if it's releasable. Who knows. But it's been a good practice. It's the first time I've tried to do that in almost twenty five years. So I found actually an old manuscript of another novel that I wrote back in two thousand and one, and so I'm going to look at that and see if that's Salvagable worth spending time on.

I was a younger man then I had hair. I was not as corrupted as I am today, not as kidding, but no, it's been lovely and thank you guys, and I'm looking forward to being back on later. As you mentioned Mike talking about a main man, Luis Bounuel. So it'll be fun. And Colin, what's new with you.

I have a new album coming out at the end of February for my project in Modern Silence Cinema. This one is solo piano music. It's a little different because some of them are prepared piano pieces and I started to around with using some reverse delay and some other effects on the What otherwise is just an acoustic piano that will be out into February, So there's if anyone wants some more information, It's just Modernsilencecinema dot com or Bad Channels Records dot com and fingers crossed. This will be the first time I'm trying to put something on vinyl, just a short run, so I'm waiting for the laths to come in. Well, I haven't used this company before, so we will see how it sounds, and I'm remaining hopeful it will be available in all digital formats and compact disc I think you can just buy it through bandcamp.

I'm not going to do the Amazon Spotify Deezer title circus this time around. I tried a lot of that last year and it did not really pick up any traffic, and it's a headache and cost some money to put it there, and I am happy to not put money in some of those people's hands. Thanks again, guys for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on.

They are all available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world. And don't dou