Havana
Short description
Havana is a 1990 drama set in Cuba in 1958, as the revolution against President Batista is gathering force. Jack Weil, an American professional gambler, comes to Havana hoping to take part in a high-stakes poker game, intending to stay out of politics entirely. He becomes involved instead with Bobby Duran, the wife of a revolutionary leader, and finds himself drawn into the conflict around them as the city fills with secret police, spies and rebels. His plans for the game and his feelings for her pull him in different directions.
Sydney Pollack directed the film, the twelfth of the seventeen he made, following Out of Africa and preceding The Firm. David Rayfiel and Judith Rascoe wrote the screenplay, and Pollack produced with Richard A. Roth. Robert Redford plays Jack, with Lena Olin as Bobby, Alan Arkin as Joe Volpi, Tomas Milian as Menocal, Daniel Davis as Marion Chigwell and Tony Plana as Julio Ramos; twenty-eight cast members are credited. The film runs 144 minutes.
Made by Universal Pictures with Mirage Enterprises, Havana cost about 40 million dollars and took roughly 9 million worldwide, a serious shortfall against its budget. On IMDb it holds 6.1/10 from around 9,200 votes, while on TMDB it has 5.8/10 from 168 votes; a critics' rating of 4.9/10 from 25 reviews places it below both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Initially, Sydney Pollack wanted to film directly in Havana, but this proved impossible for several reasons. At that time, it was illegal for US citizens to legally visit Cuba. According to then-current US law, producers were not allowed to invest money in filming in Cuba. Official relations between Cuba and the United States were extremely strained in 1989-1990. Therefore, filming was organized in another Caribbean country – the Dominican Republic. The vegetation there was similar, and there was some resemblance in the architecture. The final scene was filmed in Key West, Florida.
- Many of the extras were political emigrants from Cuba, residing in the Dominican Republic during the film's production. According to director Sydney Pollack, the atmosphere on set was quite emotional, as the extras reminisced about the homeland they had left three decades prior.
- Approximately one hundred American cars and buses from the 1950s were used in the filming.
- Around 2,000 extras and supporting actors were involved in the film, requiring between 8,000 and 10,000 costumes, as many of them changed outfits during the shooting of various scenes.
- The central plotline, featuring three main characters and a woman forced to choose between her husband and his rival – with the latter ultimately saving the couple out of simple human kindness – was borrowed from Michael Curtiz’s melodrama “Casablanca” (1942).
- The main filming location was a street section lined with facades of casinos, restaurants, and hotels. Interior scenes were shot in recreated interiors of casino gambling halls, hotel rooms, and cafes. Havana’s Prado Boulevard was recreated on the grounds of a former US Air Force base in the Dominican Republic. Around 300 people worked on this. Over 80 neon signs were made in the US and delivered to the Dominican Republic. It took 20 weeks to build the main filming location.
- The original screenplay for the film was written by Judith Rascoe in the mid-1970s. At that time, Jack Nicholson and Jane Fonda were slated to star in the film, but they left the project due to delays in the start of filming.
- Raúl Juliá appeared in a supporting, but important role for the plot of the film. This actor received an 'Oscar' for Best Actor for his work in Héctor Babenco's drama 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' (1985), but he wasn't even mentioned in the credits of 'Havana'. The actor himself wanted his name to appear in the credits immediately after Robert Redford's, but for contractual reasons this was impossible, and then Juliá asked that his name not be included in the credits at all. That is why Lena Olin's name followed Redford's in the credits, followed by Alan Arkin's.
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