YMMV / I Am Cuba

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The film villainizes capitalists (particularly Americans) with stylized sequences of frenetic jazz parties. The viewers are supposed to find them shamefully decadent, but audiences instead thought that being a capitalist looked incredibly fun. The film was not successful as propaganda, but it fittingly gained a following in America many decades later from critics who admired the stylish filmmaking.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The first section was meant to condemn the excesses, debauchery, and economic exploitation of capitalism in Cuba. Instead, with its Epic Tracking Shots of pool parties and stylishly-shot jazz clubs, the film made capitalism look awesome. For this reason, the film flopped in the Soviet world and was virtually forgotten. On the other hand, Hollywood filmmakers eventually rediscovered it and honored its filmmaking techniques.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: After Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola spearheaded a restoration in the 90's, the film became a hot commodity in the North America film festival/repertory circuit, with Terrence Rafferty of The New Yorker joking that theater staff probably had to be "carrying ravished film students from the theater on stretchers". It's now more popular in the West than it is in Russia or Cuba. (The documentary I Am Cuba: The Siberian Mammoth tracked down surviving members of the cast and crew to ask them about the production, and nearly all of them were surprised that ANYONE was still interested in a film that everyone involved had written off as a tremendous flop)
• Harsher in Hindsight: In Enrique's story, the song the American sailors sing before attempting to rape the prostitute has the lines "the sexy broads in old Guantanamo, they give us all that we want and they'll never say no". Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which has stayed open on Cuban soil due to the US government exploiting the open ended nature of the original lease signed with the pre-revolutionary government, is now more infamous for the detention camps used to hold suspected terrorists in The War on Terror, and as the site for some of the US government's most heinous modern abuses of human rights...including sexual assault of detainees.
• Vindicated by History: This Soviet-Cuban co-production was a flop in both Cuba and the Soviet Union: Cuban audiences felt that it was too stereotypical, Soviet audiences thought it was too artsy, and film critics on both sides thought it was too sympathetic to the Batista-era bourgeoisie and made American decadence look too fun. It wasn't until after the fall of the Iron Curtain when it was rediscovered by Hollywood filmmakers, where it became known as a masterpiece and as one of the best-filmed movies ever made.

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