Monumental Melodrama: Mikhail Kalatozov’s Retrospective Return to 1920s Agitprop Cinema in I Am Cuba

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the revival of silent film tropes, particularly silent-era melodrama, in the later films of Mikhail Kalatozov.Kalatozov, a Soviet filmmaker who began his career at the tail end of the silent era, created several masterful works in the post-Stalin era that conspicuously hark en back to Soviet cinema of the 1920s, most significantly The Cranes are Flying and I Am Cuba .This article probes the melodramatic essence of I Am Cuba , a film celebrating the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, as the author discusses the ways in which melodrama, homage to silent Soviet cinema, and groundbreaking cinematography overshadow the ideological orientation of this film, which ultimately led to the shelving of the film in the Soviet Union.