Near the beginning of Mikhail Kalatozov's eye-popping SOY CUBA (1964), the camera watches models parade, glides Spider-man like down a wall, circulates a pool party and then, still in the same take, goes underwater swimming for Christ's sake!
Sergei Urusevsky's constantly moving (roving is possibly a better word) camera, steadier than a Steadicam, yet performing unbelieveable traverses of height and obstacle, is fascinating: in one almost throwaway shot he walks us through a top storey cigar factory (where the revolutionary flag is unfurled) and then blithely continues out of the window, and floats way out over a funeral procession from the air, making Luciano Tovoli's famous trick shot in The Passenger look positively insipid in comparison (indeed, in an online review of the same pair's The Letter Never Sent (1959) there's reference to another such brain-defying stunt; The Cranes Are Flying (1957), their initial collaboration, is also highly rated).
These long takes of constant movement, the very wide angles, black skies, sound effects and Carlos Fariñas' unfamiliar score give this an almost hallucinatory quality, but the combination of powerful cinematic technique and revolutionary propaganda make this distinctly Soviet.
See also review I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth
