Our Man in Havana

Last night I viewed via YouTube yet another Alec Guinness comedy, Carol Reed's film of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana (1959). The team that brought us The Third Man re-unites for a spy satire of decidedly mixed quality. What it does well it does well, but it has a number of serious flaws that prevent it from being a great film.

The film's plot, set in pre-Castro Cuba, involves Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness), a successful vacuum cleaner salesman struggling to support his frivilous daughter Milly (Jo Morrow). He wishes for more money to send Milly away from Cuba, which is beginning to convulse with revolutionary chaos, and so accepts (albeit reluctantly) the offer a shady Englishman (Noel Coward) to work as MI6's agent in Havana. Jim accepts, feeding MI6 bogus information about Cuban military build-up while accepting their payment, but finds he's playing a very dangeorus game when one of his "agents" is murdered by shady forces, followed by friend, German scientist Dr. Hasselbacher (Burl Ives). With the help of his daughter and secretary (Maureen O'Hara), Wormold tries to escape Cuba and worm his way out of his web of deceit before it's too late.

Our Man in Havana has the trappings of being a great film. Greene and Reed proved with The Third Man that they could combine cynical humor, hard-boiled espionage and stylish direction into a top-notch film, but this movie doesn't have what it needs to go that extra mile and become a true classics.

One of the film's biggest failings is in its lack of seriousness. The film is at its best during the lighter segments; the early scenes are right out of an Ealing Comedy (with the not-Ealing, but Ealing-esque Captain's Paradise being the most pertinent comparison), with rather broad verbal and character humor and nice location work in actual Havana locations. The movie has some great moments, especially Guinness's drawings of Cuban defense installations (which completely flummox his MI6 handlers), Guinness playing alcoholic chess with Kovacs, and especially Coward "propositioning" Guinness in a pub while recruitng him (an extremely risque scene, all the funnier to those familiar with the actor's private lives).

This part is all well and good, but the movie is clearly trying to be more than just a flippant, whimsical comedy, and its transitions to seriousness (or at least dark, caustic satire) towards the end just don't work. Alec Guinness is believable as a mild-mannered, flustered and gleefully duplictious false agent but not as the tough guy the script requires him to be towards the end, and he fails to spark much chemistry with Maureen O'Hara, badly underused as his loyal secretary. The movie fails to bring an appropriate sense of menace given its dark undertones and subject matter, and the movie is Hitchcockian in its maddening vagueness as to who, exactly, is our hero's adversary. Captain Segura is vaguely menacing but is portrayed as more of a bumbler than a real menace, and we see little or nothing of the oppressive Batista regime so often referenced in the script (perhaps understandable since it was filmed on location in Cuba). As a comedy it works well, but it's too broad, vague and flippant to have much impact as satire of Cold War politics or espionage.

Technically the film is well-done but not overly impressive. There is nice location photography, but only a few strongly shot moments - the movie is pretty much routine coverage, and doesn't even approach Reed's work on The Third Man. Frank Denis's score is pretty routine and doesn't contribute a whole lot to the film.

The movie assembles a cast of great British and American talent. Surprisingly, Alec Guinness gives a fairly weak performance; he seems overwhelmed by the twisting, turning plot twists and tonal shifts. Because he's Alec Guinness he gets a few laughs and strong moments but he doesn't own the film the way he does, say, The Lavender Hill Mob or The Captain's Paradise or The Horse's Mouth. More effective is the supporting cast. Although Maureen O'Hara is largely wasted, there are fine turns by Burl Ives as Dr. Hasselbacher, giving a strong straight performance, an amusing turn by Ernie Kovacs as Guinness's Cuban adversary, Paul Rogers as a duplictious double agent, and fine supporting turns by old pros Noel Coward and Ralph Richardson as Wormold's flustered MI6 handlers.

So, Our Man in Havana is a fun but mostly disposable entry in Guinness's and Reed's careers - worth a look for a few laughs, but nothing overly special.

Rating: 7/10 - Recommended