Notre agent à La Havane

My idea of paradise would be sitting down with a DVD boxed set of Alec Guinness comedies from the 1950's. What will it be tonight? The Man in the White Suit, or The Ladykillers (both by Mackendrick)? Or Kind Hearts and Coronets, where he played eight parts to perfection? No, tonight will be Our Man in Havana, the blackest of black comedies, directed by Carol Reed from Graham Greene's novel. The tone of confusion and mounting panic, the sense of things sliding hopelessly out of control is perfectly caught by Reed, who had already given us the classic The Third Man.

The casting is very good. Noel Coward, Gregoire Aslan, Ferdy Mayne and especially Burl Ives as Hasselbacher, the most reluctant of spies are all impressive. Maureen O'Hara is a Rolls Royce when a Morris would have done for this story, but she plays well. I liked Ernie Kovacs as Segura, the brutal police chief; he had a nice vulgarity blended with sensitivity that worked for me.

Now my pleasure would be complete if this picture were available on DVD, and if IMDb would give us the memorable quotes this film abounds in. Like Segura: "one never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement", or Beatrice's description of her estranged husband: "He was very beautiful; he had a face like a young fledgling looking out of the nest in one of those nature films..."

Sir Alec is, as always, magnetic. Guinness described himself as someone who liked to put on the mask, preferring to live someone else's life in order to keep his own private. Here his character tries to do something like that, with mixed results.

What is it about Guinness that makes it so hard to take our eyes off him? This role is, in a way, a variation on Col. Nicholson: the simple soul who discovers, a little too late, that he has understood nothing. In both cases their innocent acts start a chain of events that comes close to tragedy (but for Hollywood endings), and yet we never think of blaming either character for what they have brought about.

On the contrary, it's hard not to feel that Wormold deserves all of his undeserved good fortune, which appears to come at no cost. And even after Greene's story dispels that illusion, we still feel that his decency ought to count for something, even if his intentions were less than pure.

You can read this movie as an allegory for the common delusion on the part of great powers that they can direct events to their liking. If so, then Guinness has, even without the tacked on ending, subverted it. And even if we know better, it is hard not to cheer for him.

This afternoon I chanced upon this terrific film on Channel 4.I had seen it years ago as a child,and couldn't understand why my father kept referring to the brilliant " Our Man in Havana" Now I know what he meant.Alec Guinness hit the perfect note in the part,as he invariably did.Havana is rendered almost tangible by director Carol Reed, a difficult feat to achieve.The rest of the cast shine too.Ernie Kovacs makes a human being out of his police-thug character.The script seems almost improvised,so fresh , pointed and witty.Compare this movie to the bulk of today's garbage,and prepare to feel very let-down by what you can see at your local Multiplex.This strange and sharp movie has re-affirmed my intention to spend some time in Havana.Buena Vista Social Club first whetted my curiosity.This movie is timeless and a great 2 hrs of entertainment/art.Enjoy! And look at Maureen O ' Hara, is she not quite splendid? !

Filmed on the eve of Castro's revolution in Cuba, this movie is noteworthy simply as a timepiece to Havana in the late 50s and as one of the last great British comedies from the Ealing Studios era. Guinness is perfect as Wormold the bumbling vacuum cleaner salesman turned spy who's invented intelligence reports become only too real.

The casting of Burl Ives and Ernie Kovacs (as German doctor and Cuban police chief respectively) are inspired genius. The glaring exception is Jo Morrow as Wormold's daughter Millie who has been turned into an `American' for the movie and just comes off as annoying, thus undermining Wormolds motivation for his actions. Thus lies the films fundamental flaw. As a book, `Our Man in Havana' is believable. The movie adds an undercurrent of absurdity (aided by Noel Cowards foppish asides and Ralph Richardson's incompetent blundering), without drifting into full comedic genre, which works well but for a few moments of slapstick and the throwaway ending. But there is more than enough here to appreciate. Carol Reed recalls his Third Man/Orson Welles street shadows during the final chase sequence, the music beautifully evokes a vintage Cuba and the cinematic setting oozes the paranoia and drama of the script. As an adaptation of the novel it remains satisfying and is perhaps one of the better adaptations of a Greene novel. All told this movie stands repeated viewing and I urge anyone to track it down.

Comedy and espionage make uneasy bedfellows in this Alec Guinness vehicle. Viewers should expect more of a morality play than a gleeful farce.

Guinness frequently played characters leading double lives. Here we see his character Wormold tripped up by one that may cost him his life. Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana who is approached by a fellow named Hawthorne (Noel Coward), alias Agent 59200, who wants Wormold to serve the British Secret Service "for $150 a month and expenses" as his subagent, 59200/5, collecting secret information regarding pre-Castro Cuba.

Encouragement for this comes not only indirectly from his love for his spendthrift daughter Milly (Jo Morrow) but more directly from his best friend, a castoff German doctor named Hasselbacker (Burl Ives), whose advice forms the heart of the message from screenwriter Graham Greene, adapting his own novel:

"That sort of information is always easy to give. If it is secret enough, you alone know it. All you need is a little imagination...As long as you invent, you do no harm. And they don't deserve the truth."

The joke, which is also the story's tragedy, is Wormold invents too well, convincing not only his London paymasters but the opposition of his fiction's veracity. Director Carol Reed famously made a spy film, "The Third Man," which blended tragedy and comedy in equal measure. This time, the comedy is more front-and-center, but efforts at creating a light tone conflict with the more serious message and various characters' fates. "Our Man In Havana" struggles at times with what kind of film it wants to be.

Perhaps Guinness's own difficulty with his part contributes to this confusion. He reportedly found Reed's instruction ("Don't act!") unhelpful. Ives is especially heavy for the film's most delicate part, making it oppressively sad; I wish that Reed's collaborator Orson Welles could have taken this part and invested it with some of his trademark cunning and craft.

Much of "Our Man In Havana" does work, and well. Oswald Morris's cinematography employs actual Havana locations to great effect, using unusually angled shots of the crumbling, sun-drenched city. You feel the tension of Wormold's world in every scene. Ernie Kovacs, a hero of early TV comedy, gets a lot out of a thanklessly straight part, the menacing but sensitive Segura, who lusts for Milly and explains his position with real sensitivity even though he never loses the cruelty of the character.

"Do you play checkers, Mr. Wormold?" he asks.

"Not very well," answers Wormold.

"In checkers, one must move more carefully than you have tonight."

Wormold isn't kidding; he only knows enough to lose. In a world this topsy-turvy, it proves the right approach.

Coward does much to serve the comedy, which would be almost entirely absent without him. His recruitment of Wormold, which is played like a seedy homosexual liaison in bars and men's rooms, is a riot when one knows not only Coward's own legendary proclivities but his friendship with that master of spy fiction, Ian Fleming. Some of the film is even set in Fleming's own Jamaican stomping grounds; one can imagine the creator of James Bond must have enjoyed this send-up of his work before it was a gleam in Albert Broccoli's eye.

"Our Man In Havana" plays with your mind and conscience for an hour and a half. It capably establishes a dark mood with cheerful undertones though it would have worked better vice versa, which was my takeaway from reading the novel. Anyway, it's intelligent, entertaining, and worth a look.