The Politics of the Trilogy Form: Lucía, the Oresteia and The Godfather

Abstract

I recall years ago reading an interview with Bertold Brecht in which the interviewer asked Brecht whether he thought his work would be read in a hundred years. Brecht’s reply was something like, “That depends who wins.” At an historical moment when the apparently triumphant voices of self-appointed pundits and mysteriously funded “think-tanks” are proclaiming both the cultura and political failure of the Cuban Revolution, I think it is appropriate to recall one of the true masterpieces created by the Cuban Revolution, the film Lucía. I speak of the film as “created by the revolution” not in any disparagement of the extraordinary contributions of the director Humberto Solás and his collaborators, but because -as I hope will become clear from my analysis- I believe that many of the film’s most striking formal features are unimaginable outside the context of a successful revolution.