By Eugene Robinson. The Washington Post Staff Writer. Tuesday, July 25, 2000; Page C01
Silvia Morini's youth in Havana was one of elegance, privilege and money. Her family lived in a wedding-cake Italianate mansion in the posh Miramar district. When she turned 16, she was presented to society at the exclusive Havana Yacht Club, which admitted only the wealthy and the white. A
special exception was made for one tan-skinned mulatto: the dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Like so many other monied Cuban families, the Morinis fled the island shortly after Fidel Castro's revolution. She spent nearly 40 years in the United States nurturing a deep resentment of Castro and all that he had wrought. But prodded by her photographer son and her own curiosity, she decided
to return to Havana to see what had become of her family's house--and revisit her fading memories of an island paradise.
Morini's visit is chronicled in "Our House in Havana," a documentary by filmmaker Stephen Olsson that airs tonight at 11 on Channel 26 as part of public television's "P.O.V." (Point of View) series.
"Our House," all things considered, is an impressive achievement. Within the limited space of one hour, and with his attention tightly focused on one 68-year-old woman and the disconnect between her nostalgia and the reality she encounters, Olsson manages to produce a remarkably
complete sketch of life in Cuba today.
Morini recalls meeting Castro shortly after the revolution and telling him she would be a patriotic Cuban and support his government. But a few days later he gave a speech deriding wealthy Cuban women as canasta-playing idlers who, whenever the "help" so much as broke a glass, would
make them work extra to pay off the "debt." For Morini, that was when Castro became not a reformer but an ogre.
The Morinis were a family of sugar barons, and the riches of the cane fields went into a rococo pile known as "La Casa Italiana." After arriving in Havana, Morini goes straight to the house. "It's no longer a home," she grumbles, but unlike so many other old buildings in
Havana it has been beautifully maintained. It now serves as the headquarters of a government foreign-exchange bank. The security guard at the front gate won't even let her into the garden.
But she does manage to get into the "guest house" next door, itself a near-mansion. The woman who now owns the place is happy to receive her but bemused that Cuban exiles are "all completely obsessed" with coming back to see their former properties.
Some of Morini's fondest memories are of the Havana Yacht Club, where she remembers the parties as the height of elegance and the beach as an expanse of pristine white sand. Olsson appropriately intersperses film clips of social events at the club in the 1950s, an era when, as an old man who
worked at the club says, "everything was based on race and money." Nowadays the club is open to the public, and there are as many black bodies as white ones sprawled on the less-than-pristine beach.
Olsson manages to touch on one of the central features of modern Cuban society, the generation gap. An elderly couple tell of their continuing support for Castro's government and describe how the revolution has improved their lives. Young men on the beach complain that today's Cuba offers
nothing for them. "If you want to go to the disco you need nice clothes," one says. "That can cost $50." In a country where state salaries are as low as $20 a month, a $50 outfit is as inaccessible as the lost Morini millions.
The real subject of the film is Morini's personal transformation. By the time she returns to the United States, her view of U.S.-Cuban relations has radically changed. Formerly a staunch supporter of the U.S. trade embargo, she begins to lobby the White House and key senators such as Jesse Helms
to end the embargo altogether--not because of any sudden love for Castro or his revolution but because she believes more contact and exchange will only be good for both societies.
Given the current moves in Congress to weaken the embargo, Olsson's film is a welcome, if idiosyncratic, contribution to the debate.
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