magasa的小站Coppola on Cuban Film
On December 2, 1975, Robert Scheer interviewed Francis Ford Coppola in San Francisco about the filmmaker’s recent trip to Cuba.
Q: Were you able to see Cuban films down there?
Any films we wanted to see. We would just sit in the screening room and they would run anything we wanted.
Q: What did you think of them?
I thought they were very good. I have been traveling around and I know very well the pain of a country like Australia that’s a wealthy civilized place and yet has no film industry, because it’s cheaper for them to buy our old television shows and our old movies. You see them struggling to have a little bit of a film thing. Yet here you have Cuba, which is a small place by comparison, and they have healthy, real, ambitious films.
Q: Are they doing experimental things?
A person who considers himself an artist approaches a socialist society worrying about, well, the art has to be really simple and follow a certain line and make a certain point, but my impression was that there’s a lot of latitude. The Cuban authority acknowledges the complexity of the human experience and their films explore that. My first impression when I saw “Memories of Underdevelopment” years ago was that it was complex and had different shades of feelings about the Revolution. They acknowledge that. They’re very eloquent about it. They’re not pretending that it’s just child’s play to put together this new kind of society; it’s really hard. And for all their many successes, they’ve had many failures. But they feel they’re right, so it’s worth pursuing it.
They know that it’s hard on people: the man at the mental institution says that the incidence of neurosis is much higher than before the Revolution. They are very honest about the difficulties of creating the socialist society—people rethinking questions of property, the fact that you’re not rewarded monetarily. They have a very elaborate system of competition that does reward workers materially. If you do better at your job than the next person, you get to buy the washing machine. The lowest paid person might make $150 a month and Fidel makes $700 a month. So, I mean, there are some differences in pay. We asked most of the smart-ass questions. For example, let’s say you don’t want to be a street cleaner anymore. How do you get out of it? And the key word was education. If you’re a street cleaner and you want to be a draftsman or an electronics engineer, you have the opportunity to study three hours a day; you don’t get paid any less. The state encourages it. It’s made available to them and they are not docked in pay. That, to me, is a really exciting idea.
Q: Did you ask questions about the problem of artistic freedom?
Yes. No one is permitted to criticize the government, other than through the channels that are provided for them. If you’re a worker or if you’re a writer, you can do it in your various workers’ groups. In a factory they get together a couple of nights a week and discuss problems—how to make things better, what’s unfair, and stuff like that. So, in other words, there are channels that allow you not to criticize the idea of the society but to figure out how to make it better. I like the honesty of it. They say no, you cannot criticize the government—that freedom, no, you don’t have.
Here in America you can write or say anything you want, and many people in Cuba are very impressed when you tell them this. They are surprised when they see something like Godfather II. They wonder, “How can you make a film that says nice things about our Revolution?” But the truth is, I believe, that the freedoms we have here are possible because they do not even come close to jeopardizing the real interests that govern our country. If there were someone who really came close to jeopardizing those interests, I believe our freedoms would vanish, one xvi Coppola on Cuban Film way or the other. If there were a man, a political candidate, who was elected to office and began implementing real programs that were counter to the big interests, there would be a coup or a murder or whatever was necessary.
In Cuba they don’t even have the illusion of that kind of political freedom. It’s as though they’re saying, “Our Revolution is too fragile, it has too many enemies, it is too difficult to pull off to allow forces inside or outside to work to counter it.” I understand the implications of what I’m saying, the dangers. But I put it to you: if they are right—if their society is truly beautiful and honest and worthwhile—then it is worth protecting, even with this suspension of freedom. In Chile, that newborn, elected society was not protected in this way, and so it was destroyed. Ironically, the government that replaced it is not taking any chances and is controlling the press and opposition in a way that Allende did not.
Q: It seems that what you’re saying is that in Cuba, for instance, people suddenly had the freedom to do something very positive, like create a mental institution or a school, which in some sense is a freedom we don’t have. Basically our freedom is still limited freedom.
We don’t have the freedom to live in a society that is healthy. That is real freedom. We don’t have the freedom to live in a society that takes care of people.
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Q: Were you able to see Cuban films down there?
Any films we wanted to see. We would just sit in the screening room and they would run anything we wanted.
Q: What did you think of them?
I thought they were very good. I have been traveling around and I know very well the pain of a country like Australia that’s a wealthy civilized place and yet has no film industry, because it’s cheaper for them to buy our old television shows and our old movies. You see them struggling to have a little bit of a film thing. Yet here you have Cuba, which is a small place by comparison, and they have healthy, real, ambitious films.
Q: Are they doing experimental things?
A person who considers himself an artist approaches a socialist society worrying about, well, the art has to be really simple and follow a certain line and make a certain point, but my impression was that there’s a lot of latitude. The Cuban authority acknowledges the complexity of the human experience and their films explore that. My first impression when I saw “Memories of Underdevelopment” years ago was that it was complex and had different shades of feelings about the Revolution. They acknowledge that. They’re very eloquent about it. They’re not pretending that it’s just child’s play to put together this new kind of society; it’s really hard. And for all their many successes, they’ve had many failures. But they feel they’re right, so it’s worth pursuing it.
They know that it’s hard on people: the man at the mental institution says that the incidence of neurosis is much higher than before the Revolution. They are very honest about the difficulties of creating the socialist society—people rethinking questions of property, the fact that you’re not rewarded monetarily. They have a very elaborate system of competition that does reward workers materially. If you do better at your job than the next person, you get to buy the washing machine. The lowest paid person might make $150 a month and Fidel makes $700 a month. So, I mean, there are some differences in pay. We asked most of the smart-ass questions. For example, let’s say you don’t want to be a street cleaner anymore. How do you get out of it? And the key word was education. If you’re a street cleaner and you want to be a draftsman or an electronics engineer, you have the opportunity to study three hours a day; you don’t get paid any less. The state encourages it. It’s made available to them and they are not docked in pay. That, to me, is a really exciting idea.
Q: Did you ask questions about the problem of artistic freedom?
Yes. No one is permitted to criticize the government, other than through the channels that are provided for them. If you’re a worker or if you’re a writer, you can do it in your various workers’ groups. In a factory they get together a couple of nights a week and discuss problems—how to make things better, what’s unfair, and stuff like that. So, in other words, there are channels that allow you not to criticize the idea of the society but to figure out how to make it better. I like the honesty of it. They say no, you cannot criticize the government—that freedom, no, you don’t have.
Here in America you can write or say anything you want, and many people in Cuba are very impressed when you tell them this. They are surprised when they see something like Godfather II. They wonder, “How can you make a film that says nice things about our Revolution?” But the truth is, I believe, that the freedoms we have here are possible because they do not even come close to jeopardizing the real interests that govern our country. If there were someone who really came close to jeopardizing those interests, I believe our freedoms would vanish, one xvi Coppola on Cuban Film way or the other. If there were a man, a political candidate, who was elected to office and began implementing real programs that were counter to the big interests, there would be a coup or a murder or whatever was necessary.
In Cuba they don’t even have the illusion of that kind of political freedom. It’s as though they’re saying, “Our Revolution is too fragile, it has too many enemies, it is too difficult to pull off to allow forces inside or outside to work to counter it.” I understand the implications of what I’m saying, the dangers. But I put it to you: if they are right—if their society is truly beautiful and honest and worthwhile—then it is worth protecting, even with this suspension of freedom. In Chile, that newborn, elected society was not protected in this way, and so it was destroyed. Ironically, the government that replaced it is not taking any chances and is controlling the press and opposition in a way that Allende did not.
Q: It seems that what you’re saying is that in Cuba, for instance, people suddenly had the freedom to do something very positive, like create a mental institution or a school, which in some sense is a freedom we don’t have. Basically our freedom is still limited freedom.
We don’t have the freedom to live in a society that is healthy. That is real freedom. We don’t have the freedom to live in a society that takes care of people.
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