Sequence shot I am Cuba - The Hotel (1964)
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
Film title: I am Cuba (Soy Cuba / Я - Куба)
Year : 1964
Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Country: USSR / Cuba (co-production Mosfilm / ICAIC)
Cinematographer: Sergei Urusevsky
Main camera operator: Alexander Calzatti (was 22 years old during filming)
Screenwriters: Evgeny Evtushenko, Enrique Pineda Barnet
Camera: Éclair CM3 Camiflex (400-foot range, handheld)
Main lens: Kinoptik 9.8mm (used for 90% of the film)
Format: 35mm black and white
Sound: MOS (all post-synchronized)
Shot duration: ~3 minutes (single continuous shot, uncut)
Handcrafted devices: primitive wooden elevator, DuPont plastic waterproof box, underwater periscope rotating disc
Filming location: Havana, Cuba (hotel with two roof levels)
Total film production time: 14 months
Film budget: ~$600,000
The rooftop of a luxury hotel in Havana, before Castro. A beauty pageant is underway. Women in swimsuits pose under the tropical sun. Musicians play. Tourists drink at the bar. The camera weaves its way between bodies, parasols, and glasses, then glides over the edge of the terrace and begins to descend. Vertically. Along the facade. Three or four floors lower, it reaches a second rooftop terrace, the one with the swimming pool. Without cutting, it approaches the bar, follows a waitress bringing cocktails to some tourists, then focuses on a woman in a bikini who gets up from her lounge chair and enters the water. The camera enters with her. The image goes underwater. The sound distorts, laughter and music become a muffled hum. Bodies swim in an underwater ballet. And the camera doesn't rise. The shot ends underwater. The year is 1964.
Why this scene is iconic
Roger Ebert wrote in 1995: "There's a shot near the beginning of I Am Cuba that is one of the most astonishing I've ever seen. When you consider that it was shot in 1964, long before the era of lightweight cameras and Steadicams, this shot is almost impossible to explain. How they did it, I have no idea." Thirty years after filming, America's most famous critic still didn't understand the trick.
What makes this shot unique isn't just its technical prowess, but its narrative logic. The film is a revolutionary pamphlet: it must expose the decadence of the wealthy in Batista's Havana to justify Castro's revolution. The camera's descent is literally a descent into hell, from the sunlit rooftop to the murky waters of the pool, from the surface to the depths. The atmosphere Kalatozov was aiming for was that of Dante's Inferno. The pool teems with pot-bellied capitalists, gaunt pimps, and women in bikinis. And the camera plunges into their midst like a fallen angel. Whether or not you agree with the film's political message, the shot physically draws you into this world.
How they filmed it
Alexander Calzatti was 22 years old when he filmed this scene. He was the film's first camera operator, the son of a famous Soviet cinematographer, and a former student of Eduard Tissé, Eisenstein's legendary cinematographer on Battleship Potemkin. Kalatozov had even brought members of Eisenstein's original crew to the set of Soy Cuba.
The entire film was shot with a single camera, an Éclair CM3 Camiflex, the small, lightweight, and portable French camera beloved by New Wave directors. A single lens was used for 90% of the film: a Kinoptik 9.8mm, an ultra-wide-angle lens that allowed for close-up shooting while capturing an enormous field of view. The extremely short focal length had a decisive advantage: it reduced visible camera shake, partially compensating for the lack of any image stabilization system.
For the hotel shot, the crew built a primitive wooden elevator, lowered by hand along the facade between the two roof levels. The shot began at the top, on the beauty pageant terrace. When the camera needed to descend, a camera operator would enter the elevator, and the grips would lower it manually while they filmed. Calzatti described the film's overall working method: "We used the camera like basketball players; someone would start the scene and then pass the camera to someone else."
The underwater sequence required a specific invention. The team fabricated a makeshift watertight housing from sheets of DuPont plastic, with three handles to allow Urusevski and Calzatti to pass the camera to each other at critical moments. On the first attempt, the housing refused to submerge; the trapped air inside caused it to float. Calzatti solved the problem by drilling a hole in the housing and inserting a hollow steel tube that allowed air to escape without letting water in. A high-speed rotating glass disc, borrowed from a Soviet submarine periscope, was mounted on the lens to eject water droplets as the camera surfaced.
The shot was originally intended to continue after the dive; the camera was to resurface and continue the scene. The periscope disc had been installed precisely for this purpose: to expel water from the lens upon surfacing. But Kalatozov decided to cut the underwater shot, abandoning the continuation. The end of the shot—this image of bodies swimming in an aquatic mist, the muffled sound, the distorted light—has become far more powerful than any surfacing.
Calzatti summarized Ouroussevski's working philosophy: "He was a painter, an absolutely artistic person, but his technical knowledge was nonexistent. So he would ask me to give him things, combinations of filters, camera mounts, or to create some kind of kinetic movement for the camera. We built some 83 systems with him." Eighty-three handcrafted devices invented during a single shoot. Every shot in the film had its own gadget.
The entire film was shot in MOS, without direct sound. The dialogue was dubbed. The music, composed by Carlos Fariñas, was recorded in Russia. This technical choice completely freed the camera: no sound cables, no boom operator, no need for silence on set. The Camiflex could go anywhere.
What to observe when reviewing it
The passage over the edge of the terrace (~0:30) The camera glides over the edge of the roof as if gravity didn't exist. The operator is entering the wooden elevator. Notice the fluidity of the movement; it's a man with a camera descending in a hand-pulled wooden box, and it looks like a drone.
The waitress at the bar (~1:30) The camera follows a waitress bringing a cocktail. This isn't a gratuitous movement; Kalatozov guides you seamlessly from one character to another, using the waitress as a pivot. The technique is the same one Scorsese would use 26 years later with Henry Hill at the Copacabana.
Entering the Water (~2:30) Watch the water's surface approach. The sound changes. The light changes. This is the moment the DuPont plastic housing does its job and Calzatti's hollow steel tube vents air so the camera sinks. If the image is sharp underwater, the system is working. If it had been blurry, the film wouldn't exist.
Did you know that?
Paul Thomas Anderson saw this shot and stole it. The pool party scene in Boogie Nights (1997), where the camera follows the characters through the party and plunges into the pool, is a direct homage to I Am Cuba. Anderson has never hidden this fact. This means that one of the most famous scenes in 1990s American cinema is a copy of a shot filmed by a 22-year-old Soviet man with a supermarket plastic bag in Havana in 1964.
The hotel shot is the second article on this blog dedicated to I Am Cuba; the first covers the funeral procession. Both shots share the same philosophy: pre-Steadicam, handcrafted equipment (cables and pulleys for the procession, a wooden elevator and plastic case for the hotel), the same 9.8mm lens, the same Camiflex camera passed from hand to hand. Together, they constitute the technical cradle of the modern long take, the DNA of everything McConkey, Lubezki, Deakins, and others would do after them.
Scorsese, when he saw the film in 1993, said that if he had seen it when he was younger, he would have become a very different director. Calzatti, for his part, summed up the film's secret in one sentence: "There were no special effects, except for what was done in front of the camera. Everything was done by hand, garage style."
Sources
Alexander Calzatti, interview and testimony in American Cinematographer - "The Astonishing Images of I Am Cuba" (George E. Turner, July 1995, via theasc.com)
Milestone Films Press Kit - Production Notes for the US Release
Roger Ebert – review of I Am Cuba (1995)
Vicente Ferraz – documentary Soy Cuba: O Mamute Siberiano (2005)
Wikipedia - I Am Cuba
Medium / War Is Boring - "Moscow's Cuban Propaganda Movie Was a Cinematic Masterpiece — And a Commercial Flop"
Bright Lights Film Journal - "I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)"
Learn About Film - "I Am Cuba / Soy Cuba"
IMDB - I Am Cuba, trivia and reviews
Also read:
Long take in Touch of Evil (1958) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/la-soif-du-mal - The other seminal shot from the same era: Welles shot a 3-minute, 20-second crane shot in 1958, Kalatozov responded with a descent into a swimming pool in 1964 — both are the DNA of everything else
Choreographing an action scene in a single take https://www.plan-sequences.com/blog-plan-sequences/chorgraphier-une-scne-daction-en-plan-squence-le-guide-complet - 83 handcrafted devices invented during a single shoot: how Calzatti and Urusevsky solved the impossible in Havana in 1964, garage style
