Havana/The intense gaze of Adela Legrá in Lucia (1968) is one of the most recognizable images of Cuban cinema. In the early hours of this Friday, the actress who Humberto Solás discovered in the mid-sixties and who left a unique mark on national cinematography died in Santiago de Cuba. When he died he was 86 years old and his name was definitively linked to two essential films: Manuela (1966) and Lucia.
Humberto Solás found her in Baracoa while he was preparing a medium-length film for a contest of the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industry dedicated to the guerrillas. I was not looking for an actress in the usual sense of the word, nor someone capable of “composing” a character. I needed a face and a body that would sustain the story without filters, without learned gestures. That same aspiration would be formulated years later by Robert Bressonone of the great masters of modern cinema, in his book Notes on the cinematographer (published in 1975), when he wrote: “What I am looking for is not interpretation, but presence. Not actors who represent, but human beings who are.”
Adela Legrá embodied that idea almost literally. His performance was not based on psychology or expressive calculation. There was something more direct, more physical about her. There was no clear distance between the woman and the character: the camera simply followed her. The rage, pain, or determination did not seem “acted”; They arose as part of the same vital impulse. She was, in her own flesh, the quintessence of the Cuban peasant woman.
His performance was not based on psychology or expressive calculation. There was something more direct, more physical in her.
This is how it was born Manuela (1966), a film shot with formal freedom, hand-held camera and a method that allowed improvisation. There, Legrá moved with unusual naturalness. His energy was harsh, sometimes overflowing, and his frontal gaze avoided any complacency.
Two years later, Solás summoned her again for the third episode of Lucia. Considered one of the best works in the history of Cuban cinema, a classic that has transcended for decades and is still studied.
Throughout her career, Adela Legrá participated in many more films such as Rancher (1976), The brigadier (1978), That long night (1979), red powder (1981), Honey for Oshún (2001) and Cuba neighborhood (2005).
With her death, Cuban cinema loses an unrepeatable actress. His gaze remains, and will continue, always there. His body will be laid to rest in the next few hours at the El Calvario funeral home in Santiago de Cuba, according to the official media. Cubadebate.
