Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Death of a Bureaucrat (1966)
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This arresting early work by one of Cuba's foremost film-makers is a black comedy about institutionalised bureaucracy at its most pedantic. After a model factory worker is killed in an accident at work, he's buried with his union card as a mark of eternal solidarity; trouble is, when his wife applies for a pension, she's told she must present the card before she can get any money - and there's a law forbidding exhumation within the first two years of burial. It's a surprising piece to have been made in the Cuba of the mid-'60s, but the laughs come as much from a Buñuelian sense of absurdity as they do from any outright criticism of Castro's regime.Author: TJ
Cast & crew
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Cast: Salvador Wood, Silvia Planas, Manuel Estanillo, Gaspar de Santelices, Carlos Ruiz de la Tejera full cast
Duration: 85 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now