Cecilia

To me the film was a propaganda piece to reiterate how awful slavery was, with vivid, though perhaps unverifiable, cruelty. How shallow and callow, fickle, and untrustworthy was the aristocracy, particularly the anti-hero, Leonardo. We are shown many instances how the ruling class exploits people of color and the lower classes. The story was based on what appears to be a Gothic novel and was so melodramatically interpreted it made me laugh. Except for the acting in a wonderful scene in which Leonardo's mother is bargaining with the 'governor/viceroy' to protect her son because she was sharing with him valuable information gained from him to thwart a lower-class/slave rebellion. The make-up of the principal actors looked fake, and gave them unnatural skin tones, which were distracting. Little or no background information was worked into the script to help viewers understand the place, time, and control in Cuba.