Post #681186 by bigbrotiki on Sat, Jun 8, 2013 12:25 AM

I have always maintaind that the one film that best captures the spirit of Tiki (though ethnographically not 100% Tiki) is "I am Cuba":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-IGICoMOso
(beginning at 00:55, but don't skip the opening camera move - a classic)

...and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNPTu7gAYxo

Here I mention the connection to Trader Vic's:
Havana Before Castro

It stands as a great irony of 20th Century pop culture that the film that best portrays the look and atmosphere of the late 50s/early 60s Tiki lounge is a movie that was directed and shot by RUSSIANS in CUBA as an ANTI-CAPITALIST propaganda film condemning the colonial chauvinism of American tourists :)

The thing is, one can tell how much FUN the Russian artists had shooting these scenes. The result was that in Communist Cuba and Russia the film was a flop: The Cuban critics deemed it too cliche, the Russians too seductive. Decades later, after the miss-understood Russian director and cameraman had passed away, Francis Ford Coppola re-discovered it as a cinematic gem. When I first came upon the nightclub scenes, I thought I was seeing an artfully styled contemporary music video, not something shot in 1964 !

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2013-06-08 14:53 ]