The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 334

CALENDAR MOVIES 1 1 a i hJi oV km, 1 is 'Vi'fsss's. THE AMERICAN FROM CUBA BY KEVIN THOMAS Over the past several years a number of Cuban films have reached America, some of them heavy-handed Marxist propaganda but some such revolutionary masterpieces as Tomas Gutierrez Alea's "Memories of Underdevelopment" and Humberto Solas' "Lucia." Now we get a glimpse of the other side of the story with the delightful and wry "El Super' the first film depicting the American experience of the Cuban refu- 'EL SUPER' A Max Mambru Films presentation. Producers Manuel Arce, Leon Ichaso. Directors Ichaso, Orlando Jimenez-Leal. Screenplay Ichaso, Arce; based on the play by Ivan Acosta.

Camera Orlando Jimenez-Leal. Music Enrique Ubieta. Costumes Haydte Zambrana. Technical adviser Frank Cancel. Film editor Gloria Pineyro.

Featuring Raymundo Hidalgo-Gato. Zully Montero. Reynaldo Medina, Elizabth Pena, Juan Granda, Hilda Lee, Phil Joint, Leonardo Soriano, Efrain Lopez-Neri. Ana Margarita Martinez-Casado. In Spanish and English, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 nr. 30 min. Times-rated: Family. gees. One of the most pleasurable offerings of Filmex, it opens a regular run Wednesday at the Westland II.

El Super, Roberto (Raymundo Hidalgo-Gato), is superintendent of a huge old Upper West Side Manhattan apartment house where he dutifully tends the boiler in the basement, hassles with the garbage in the snow and makes minor repairs for the tenants. He's conscientious, but there's time to gather around that boiler and play cards with the superintendents of the nearby buildings, all of whom are Latinos. There's lots of talk about the good old days, much cursing of Fidel and reliving of Bay of Pigs heroics. Eut for Roberto such sentiments have gone stale. At 42 he's fed up with his routine existence, the freezing winters, New York itself.

He dreams, like so many of his friends, of returning to Cuba, but a more realistic alternative grows ever larger in his mind: a move to Miami. As this engaging, unpretentious film unfolds and our concern for the likable Roberto to get his chance to go to Miami grows, we're drawn into the warm but often frustrating life of his family and friends. He has a lovely, supportive wife (Zully Montero), but he's confronted with a beautiful teen-age daughter (Elizabeth Pena) who's so much an American she says she wouldn't go back to the homeland she scarcely remembers even if given the chance. Indeed, the freer, more perilous ways of American youth cause her parents great anxiety. "El Super" is based on a play, but that doesn't occur to you while watching it.

Under Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jimenez-Leal's direction it has an easy, natural flow. (Ichaso and Manuel Arce both produced and adapted the film from Ivan Acosta's play.) These people, all of whom are Cuban emigres, take a light, humorous touch to El Super's predicament, but in doing so they throw in relief the pain and dislocation that every immigrant group has experienced since the founding of this nation. "El Super" thus becomes an instance of perceiving the universal through the particular, and as a result, is a genuinely American film. "El Super" benefits from Enrique Ubie-ta's zesty, infectious Latino score and Jimenez-Leal's gritty camerawork captures the harshness of life in Manhattan during the winter. Much of the very talented and accomplished cast was in the stage production of "El Super" (Times-rated: Family) and doubtless this contributes to the ensemble quality of the playing.

A distinguished veteran of the stage, Raymundo Hidalgo-Gato is especially endearing as El Super, a quietly brave, bemused Everyman. Raymundo Hidalgo-Gato plays lead in "El Super," a look at displaced Cubans. OLIVIER: IS THERE AN IMAGE LEFT IN THE MIRROR? 5- 2 CO ing actor, working in hokum? "I was in hospital a long time. I needed the job," Sir Laurence smiles. This is only partly true.

It's characteristic of Olivier to pretend he's the opposite of what people imagine him to be. People assume he's a wealthy man after his recent string of starring parts in major films like "The Marathon Man" or "The Betsy," and his supposedly lucrative endorsements of Polaroid cameras and Rolex watches. People assume he's a tall, strong individual with all his powers intact, capable of wrestling Gregory Peck to a standstill, as he appeared to do in "The Boys From Brazil." People assume he's still the titan of the British theater, a star from his first opening night in 1927, capable of astonishing performances any time. Actually, he hasn't worked on a stage for five years, not since he gave up managing Britain's National Theater. "No, I can't do theater any more," Sir Laurence says.

"I tire too easily these days. I have all my medical problems as well." Working in films can be grueling, but it doesn't require the sustained nightly effort he's been saying that sort of thing for decades, just before turning on the power when the camera rolls or the curtain goes up. Olivier is either a genuinely shy man, as some who know him well have said, or else he cleverly makes people underestimate him the better to steal scenes from them. Maybe he's not quite so frail as he's giving out now. We shall see.

Anyway, he keeps showing up for work, despite his medical problems. Why? "I have to work," Sir Laurence explains. He's often said that he wants to give his children the financial start in life he didn't have. The son of a poor parson, Olivier remembers that he always had to use his father's bath water after him. Olivier is making "Dracula" back-to-back after finishing "A Little Romance" in Paris.

Still, he says, "I'm lucky to be in work, in fact. This film is purest hokum, of course, but fun." (He also just signed to star with Burgess Meredith in MGM's "Clash of the Titans," be shot this summer in Malta, Spain, Italy and London.) So why is the man, acknowledged by most critics to be the world's greatest liv Continued from First Page Sir Laurence has a firm handshake, but an odd one. It's more a thumbshake than a handshake. Evidently those bandages on the tips of two of his fingers aren't props. "No, not at all.

They're quite painful." He appears almost apologetic. "My skin is oversensitive as a result of my dermato-myositis. It's a disease that eats away at the muscles, the body attacking itself." Sir Laurence indicates how thin his upper arms and shoulders have become. "The doctors caught it just before it reached down here to the diaphragm. I had to spend 16 weeks in hospital.

"Look there, that mark on the back of my hand." He points out a penny-sized purplish blemish. "I don't know how I got that could have just brushed it against a piece of furniture. So I have to be very careful. I can't shake hands any more, I'm so sorry." At 71, can Olivier be far from the end of his career? This winter he's been in the process of striking camp. He's given up his pied-a-terre in central London and now he's moving his wife (actress Jean Plo-wright) and their three teen-age children out of the home he's had in Brighton an hour south of London) for 17 years.

"It's really two houses side by side. The second one is virtually for the children and their nannies and so on. We had to give up the first house last month. Since then, we've all been crammed like rodents into the other one, amongst the awful hoard of ages. Until we get through this move, I can't make any other plans." In the last couple of years, Olivier has endured an appalling run of ill health-prostate cancer, thrombosis, kidney trouble and lately dermatomyositis.

Yet despite his evident frailness, he remains full of his trademark, self-deprecating jokes. At one point he steps off his mark and director John Badham warns him that the camera can't pick up his face. "Just as well." Olivier murmurs. By all accounts, 2 ID a..