Customer Reviews

Our Man in Havana

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Our Man in Havana is an excellent, sly black comedy with a screenplay by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed. James Wormold (Alec Guinness) is a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana. He's getting by but needs more money to take care of his teen-aged daughter. He's recruited as a spy for Britain by Noel Coward. He doesn't really know what's wanted, but he can use the money. Since he doesn't know anything of value, he begins making up stories and inventing plans, and mentioning the names of people supposedly involved. The names, of course, are just names he picked at random. His masterpiece is his "discovery" of a giant military complex, the plans of which he gets to his controller (Coward), who sends them on to London. The plans are actually the diagrams of one of his vacuum cleaners. This first part of the movie is a funny, sharp-edged parody of British pomposity and the thick headedness of "intelligence."

But then people begin to die.

It seems there may be more than British spies in Havana, spies who also believe the plans are genuine, and who are a lot more ruthless than the British. The second half of the film is darker, less funny and much more sardonic.

The cast is a strange grouping of disparate acting styles, but somehow they all work very well together. In addition to Guinness and Coward, there is Burl Ives, Ernie Kovacs, Maureen O'Hara and Ralph Richardson. Coward is priceless as a mannered, fatuous, obliviously incompetent spy. Kovacs for once is less Kovacs and more the part. He plays the Cuban police's main man in catching spies. He's amusing, and so are his lines. Among them, "There are two classes of people: those who can be tortured and those who can't." He and Guinness share a great scene where Guinness, who has to get away from Kovacs, challenges him to a checkers match with the pieces being miniature liquor bottles. Each time a piece is taken, the victor has to drink it. Guinness manages to lose regularly. Kovacs preens on his victories and only gradually, and increasingly incoherently, begins to suspect.

For Reed, who directed The Third Man, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol and other classic films, this is, in my opinion, the last of his first-rate movies. For years it has needed a Region 1 DVD release. There is a fine Region 2 DVD which I have. I'll add to this review if there are any significant differences or extras.

A simply wonderful adaptation by Graham Greene of his book about how an unwitting British expatriate who is having difficulty supporting his daughter's expensive habits as a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana is recruited to become a secret agent for the British government. The movie is intelligent, witty, and timely with great casting and excellent performances. While billed as a tongue-in-cheek comedy, it may not be too far from the truth in shedding light on how governments recruit their spies, obtain secret information, and cover their tracks. The film is excellent - and the book is, too.

It is scandalous that this fine film has been withheld from DVD and VHS, Region 1 release in the United States. What possibly could be the problem? It couldn't be because of the director, the same Carol Reed of The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, A Kid for Two Farthings, Oliver, and scores of other fine films. It couldn't be because of the superb cast of Alec Guinness, Maureen O'Hara, Burl Ives, Ernie Kovacs, Ralph Richardson, and Noel Coward. It certainly would not be because of the same infallible textures by photographer Oswald Morris which brought oohs and aahs for Kubrick's 1962 Lolita and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Surely there could be no argument that novelist Graham Greene's screenplay could be any less entertaining than his book. Given such a superb company, and the undeniable fact that this is an eye-popping, first-rate production, one wonders for the reason of its exile.

Our Man in Havana is an excellent, sly black comedy with a screenplay by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed. James Wormold (Alec Guinness) is a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana. He's getting by but needs more money to take care of his teen-aged daughter. He's recruited as a spy for Britain by Noel Coward. He doesn't really know what's wanted, but he can use the money. Since he doesn't know anything of value, he begins making up stories and inventing plans, and mentioning the names of people supposedly involved. The names, of course, are just names he picked at random. His masterpiece is his "discovery" of a giant military complex, the plans of which he gets to his controller (Coward), who sends them on to London. The plans are actually the diagrams of one of his vacuum cleaners. This first part of the movie is a funny, sharp-edged parody of British pomposity and the thick headedness of "intelligence."

But then people begin to die.

It seems there may be more than British spies in Havana, spies who also believe the plans are genuine, and who are a lot more ruthless than the British. The second half of the film is darker, less funny and much more sardonic.

The cast is a strange grouping of disparate acting styles, but somehow they all work very well together. In addition to Guinness and Coward, there is Burl Ives, Ernie Kovacs, Maureen O'Hara and Ralph Richardson. Coward is priceless as a mannered, fatuous, obliviously incompetent spy. Kovacs for once is less Kovacs and more the part. He plays the Cuban police's main man in catching spies. He's amusing, and so are his lines. Among them, "There are two classes of people: those who can be tortured and those who can't." He and Guinness share a great scene where Guinness, who has to get away from Kovacs, challenges him to a checkers match with the pieces being miniature liquor bottles. Each time a piece is taken, the victor has to drink it. Guinness manages to lose regularly. Kovacs preens on his victories and only gradually, and increasingly incoherently, begins to suspect.

For Reed, who directed The Third Man, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol and other classic films, this is, in my opinion, the last of his first-rate movies. He continued to direct but made such things as The Key, Oliver! and The Agony and the Ecstasy.

This is a film that cries out to be on a Region 1 DVD. If nothing else, this Region 2 DVD is an excellent reason to go out and buy an all-region/PAL-compatible DVD player. Amazon sells them.

At last this great Alec Guiness classic is available. Most of his good comedies came out in a multi-pack years ago, but this was inexplicably missing.

I can only add some personal observations here--about one of my favorite films of all time, and in my opinion, the best Cold War film ever!

1. This film is so educational, even for today's jaded audience. If you've ever wondered about spies, MI-5 (as it was back then before MI-6), Cuba in the 1950s or even how Alec Guinness looked as a young man...your answers are here. This film is an object lesson about one nation gathering intel on another. Just consider the fact that the cast and crew were free to wander Havana...Noel Coward and Ernie Kovacs took advantage and had holidays there! Kovacs brought back boxes and boxes of his favorite cigars!

2. This is one of Ernie Kovacs' finest performances, and I heard he was up for an Oscar, getting ousted only because he admittedly could not do a Spanish accent. He also wasn't very pleased about playing a captain, even though here he is menacing as a Bautista-era Cuban police captain.

3. Burl Ives is equally chilling, but only because he is a sad, wise, cornered man. I've never seen Ives in another film. Here Ives also is Oscar-worthy.

4. I love all the stories about the shooting in Havana for this film. I especially love Kovacs talking about all the people who mistook him for a real Bautista policeman. It speaks to the genuineness of this film.

5. There is a deep political warning in this film, and it isn't simply about corruption. It is also about not caring and the dangers that can fall on us through disinterest. Guinness learns the hard way with all the deaths near the end of the film, but the British government also learns that gathering intel is fraught with stupid perils--to be done rightly or not at all!

All I can conclude here is you don't really like film if you put off watching this classic 1950s gem.

This is a good adaptation of the Graham Greene novel. Excellent view of pre-Castro Cuba.

This movie was filmed a few months after Castro came to power but is set before. Some of the negative aspects of pre Castro Cuba are exaggarated, but this film is a spy movie set against the backdrop of the more seedier aspects of life in Havana at the time. Ernie Kovacs is the real star of the film as the Mercedes 300SL driving Capt Segura. Havana was the most beautiful city in Latin America at the time and we have this film to remember it by.

Collaborating for a third time with director Carol Reed ["Fallen Idol"; "The Third Man"], Graham Greene has written a script, based upon his novel "Our Man in Havana," which effervesces like vintage champagne, its humor, both dry and subtle, radiating a brilliance that obscures the fact that this black-and-white film was made in 1957, during the height of the Cold War.

The unlikely plot to which John Le Carré would later pay homage with "Tailor of Panama," is made entirely plausible due to the nuanced performance of the incomparable Alec Guinness, whose portrayal of Wormold, the seller of "Atomic Pile Vacuums" in a seedy pre-Castro Havana, ranges between bemused ineptitude and faux confidence and sophistication as he improvises on the tradecraft of espionage, a profession that has been thrust upon him. Much of the humor, in fact derives from his bumbling efforts to recruit agents. The felicitous combination of Greene and Reed ensures that the humor gradually assumes ominous overtones as Wormold's deception is quickly swallowed whole by one side of the espionage game and slowly detected and regurgitated by the other. Given the fact that the film was made before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the drawings of "secret installations" in the heart of Cuba provides the viewer with a chilling verisimilitude in hindsight.

Burl Ives, who was noted primarily for folk-singing, turns in a more-than-competent performance as Wormold's enigmatic friend, a doctor and German First-World-War veteran, whose part in the affair is never completely explained. Although Ernie Kovacs' performance of the dastardly chief of police, Captain Segura, borders on caricature, one cannot imagine anyone else playing the character in any other manner. And while I was never quite convinced by Jo Morrow in the role of the precocious convent daughter--she seems a bit too mature--the rest of the cast, which includes Maureen O'Hara as the skilled secretary that London sends to back up their most valuable asset in the Caribbean, is thoroughly credible.

Only Graham Greene could concoct this deliciously sardonic spoof on the Secret Intelligence Service in which he served during World War II. All the fabled real-life stereotypes are present and accounted for: Noel Coward as an Old Boy who, impervious to the raucous importunings of maracas-wielding street singers, strides stiffly through the steamy boulevards of Havana in a three-piece suit, bowler hat on head and umbrella in hand; Ralph Richardson as "C," the all-for-expedience Director, who hears what he wants to hear (transforming what has been described to him as a smalltime salesman into a "merchant adventurer"); the stammering spy obsessed with his pipe (reminiscent of a notorious mole under whom Greene served in real life), working for the Other Side. All contribute a note of Cold War reality to this tongue-in-cheek tale of espionage. Underlying the humor, however, lurks a question, later asked by John Le Carré: are intelligence services sometimes too willing to believe in expedient scenarios that seem clearly delineated--and therefore too good to be true, when actual events may prove to be other than they seem.

Except for the original theatrical trailer, the extras are eminently trivial and not worth watching. This fact, however, should not prevent one from buying this DVD, which, presented in letter-box form, to preserve the original Cinemascope presentation, is not to be missed.

Enjoy!

The movie version of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics) is well worth a watch - if you can find it in the US. Hmm, a movie about Cold War paranoia that cannot be purchased in the US? Perhaps the spooks at the CIA really do have a sense of humor.

Alec Guinness stars as Jim Wormold in this comedic spy thriller. Wormold is a vacuum salesman in Havana with a daughter with expensive tastes. He becomes the unlikely head of a British spy ring and is handsomely rewarded by MI-6. Only one problem: the spy ring is fake. Make that two problems: He is so successful, the Brits send out a couple helpers. No, wait more problems. Although the spy ring is fake, the names Wormold provides are of real live people in Havana. The bad guys get wind of the spy ring and for all they know, these are real spies. The movie combines humor with action.

The movie was filmed on location in Havana very shortly after the revolution removed the dictator Batista from power. Nearly a half-century later, it remains the last US movie shot in Cuba. In addition to Guinness, the movie also features Burl Ives, Ralph Richardson, Noel Coward, Maureen O'Hara, and Ernie Kovacs. Highly recommended.