We watch certain movies to fill in blanks in our cinematic résumé. Nobody has seen every important film. We hadn’t seen the British made classic Our Man in Havana, and that needed to be remedied, as it’s a title that pops up often in discussions of mid-century film. The movie is based on a famed 1958 Graham Greene novel set during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba that would be unseated by Fidel Castro and his rebels. The novel was immediately optioned, produced with Carol Reed in the director’s chair and Alec Guinness in the lead role, and premiered in London today in 1959.
What you get is a droll spy spoof that starts out as a low key comedy before evolving toward serious consequences, as Guinness plays a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana who’s picked out by bureaucrat spy Noël Coward to be the British government’s eyes and ears on the island. Spurred by his daughter’s expensive wishes for a horse, Guinness lies about his activities, ginning up a conspiracy that is—to his chagrin—deemed by the British government to be a global threat. It’s generative AG gone wrong. Only Coward realizes the secret plans Guinness has forwarded to London are in fact drawings of an advanced model of vacuum cleaner.
Anything described as droll is rarely laugh out loud funny, but you’ll crack a few smiles as Guinness, looking a bit stunned throughout, gets in deeper and deeper with both his own government and the Cuban secret police. The moral of the story, that governments see all unexpected developments as threats the same way hammers see all problems as nails, is pretty much baked in from the beginning and is no surprise. But what’s interesting to watch is Guinness, his detached calm being channelled into a somewhat airheaded character, foolish where the iconic Obi-Wan Kenobi he’d later play is so wise.
Another important aspect of the film is that it was made in Havana just after the Cuban Revolution, and its numerous exteriors shot in the center of Habana Vieja, in locations such as the famed Sloppy Joe’s Bar, as well as inside Guinness’s street-view apartment, make it possibly the best pre-embargo document of the City of Columns ever made. Due to that, the Cold War context, and the stupefied Guinness, we very much enjoyed the film. Some may find “droll” to be synonymous with “slow,” and we can understand that. But spy movie aficionados, Guinness fans, and history buffs should confidently proceed.
