Notre agent à La Havane

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.