Duas modernidades, na realidade uma

That I adored making - I loved it! I had no script - I did a Rossellini again. This was a picture I was never going to make; [Russel] Rouse and [Clarence] Greene were going to make it. Fromkess had hired a whole staff and everything, and then threw the script out, a week before we were to shoot. He call me and said "ok, you say you can do things - shoot it without script - invent it." So I got myself some actors. I had only one page - an outline. Shüfftan did that picture for me, too. I really had fun on that one - we shot the whole picture on one set. We had quite a musical success with the cockeyed thing: "Tico Tico" was used in that for the first time. I wanted to make something special - to be able to do a Grand Hotel in one place.

Ulmer, sobre Club Havana, entrevistado por Peter Bogdanovich

(...) Club Havana est à la fois grand "petit film" et une métaphore, une allégorie poussée à l'extrême de tout travail dramaturgique qui consiste à bien enfermer des destinées entières dans un cadre contraignant (en espace, en temps) mais dont la contrainte ne doit pas être ressentie comme telle par le spectateur. Au contraire, dans Club Havana, l'étroitesse du budget, la concision du récit lui procurent une évidente jubilation. C'est si l'on veut le Carosse d'or d'Ulmer ou, pour rester dans la comparaison renoirienne, le Petit Théâtre d'Edgar Ulmer. Théâtre d'ombres évidemment.

Jacques Lourcelles, Edgar Ulmer, l’empereur du bis, em Le bandit démasqué