El bárbaro del ritmo

You learn NOTHING about the great singer Beny Moré; leaves you wondering WHY DID THEY MAKE THIS TERRIBLE MOVIE???? And the production values are on the level of the Mexican classic "Juana la Cubana". But,nevertheless, the music is great, a few of the dance sequences are fun, and seeing the aged "Rumberas" Ninón Sevilla and Rosita Fornésbadly act a la John Waters is worth the price of admission... This was, apparently, a Cuban/Mexican production and, while purporting to be "about" Moré, it is really a melodrama about the making of a biopic and a pretentious study of the actor selected to portray him. A disaster all around.

I saw the original 90 minute version when the film opened during the film festival in Havana, in December 1987. The reaction was unanimously negative, mainly for the miscasting of Jorge Montes de Oca not even as Benny Moré, but as a young aspiring actor to play the great Cuban singer. In Mexico it was cut to 76 minutes and retitled "El Bárbaro del Ritmo (Benny Moré)", to not be available, but this is the copy that today is available on DVD and is aired from time to time on Mexican television.

As additional information, Cuban co-director Constante "Rapi" Diego, son of renowned poet Eliseo Diego, was also a prominent artist and illustrator of children's books. His first fiction feature film was the award-winning drama "El corazón sobre la tierra" (1984), followed by the ill-fated project "Hoy como ayer", which seriously affected his career and health. It took him five years to recover to make his third feature film, "Mascaró", for which he also received various awards. And in 2002, as a retaliation, he made the documentary "Con la misma pasión", in which he gave the portrait of Benny Moré that he did not achieve in "Hoy como ayer". Rapi died four years later, at age 56.