Our Man in Havana

Plot synopsis:
In the first shot, a quintessentially British man in a dark suit and hat, tightly rolled umbrella, and immobile face, strides along Havana streets besieged by grinning musicians and hawkers. Hawthorne (Noel Coward) is a Secret Service official based in Jamaica charged with recruiting a group of secret agents to report on Cuban military activities for a monthly stipend. Hawthorne approaches Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness), an expatriate Englishman living in Havana in the late 1950s with his beautiful teenage daughter Milly (Jo Morrow), who is attending a Catholic all girls school. Jim has lived in Cuba for fifteen years, and despite the rocky political climate, considers it home. Wormold's spare time consists of drinks with German Dr. Hasselbacher (Burl Ives) and fawning over his daughter, who has reached that precarious threshold between childhood and adulthood.Milly is being trailed by police captain Segura (Ernie Kovacs), who is friendly with the nuns at Millys school, and is looking for a traditional and pretty young woman to be his wife from among the graduating students. Milly, a dazzling blonde, is his target. When the very conspicuous Hawthorne shows up, Segura guesses that something of interest to the police may be going on, and makes inquiries hoping to use the information for blackmailing Jim in his favor, if necessary.Jim owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn't successful enough, as he wants to provide greater luxuries for Milly, such as finishing school in Switzerland, and Milly has some expensive expectations of her own, such as owning a horse.Jim says yes to Hawthorne because of his money needs, but he has no clue about spying. Hawthorne shows him how to encode messages for telegraphing his reports and gives him general pointers. Hawthorne just tells him to approach people he knows, but that gets Jim nowhere. Jim approaches one of his trusted employees but the man misunderstands and thinks Jim is asking for prostitutes. Several times during the rest of the movie, a prostitute is brought to him by this employee.Prodded by Millys wishes to have a horse, Jim gets the Secret Service to pay for his membership in a hugely expensive country club, with the excuse that he needs access to a place where he meets important people. When he approaches members of the country club, his social ineptitude creates confusions and they think he is trying to come onto them. Instead of spying, Wormold spends most of his time drinking at the country club, which he can finally afford.Jims closest friend, a former German army officer, Dr. Hasselbacher, suggests that the best secrets are known to no one, so Jim decides to pretend to have a list of agents and provide fictional tales for the benefit of the bosses in London. Hasselbacher opines that Jim would not be doing anything immoral because countries feel obligated to play a game and spy on each other, and it might has well be him who gets paid.As he does nothing real to report, Jim pretends first to recruit agents and then that they discover secret constructions. In order to have a semblance of credibility, the names and professions he gives his fake agents are names and professions of real people.When London messages demand some information beyond lists of names, Jim notices that images of his vacuum cleaners, if enlarged and doctored, look like odd buildings having a scientific or military purpose. He sends drawings to England, and the spy boss C (Ralph Richardson) is deeply impressed. Some other reports are inspired by comic strips. He is seen as the best agent in the Western Hemisphere, and the spy agency decides to send him support staff.Soon Beatrice Severn (Maureen O'Hara) arrives in Havana, sent by C to be his "bookkeeper" and assistant. Beatrice finds Jim romantically attractive. When she begins to catch on to the deceptions, she keeps quiet despite misgivings.There are others who get suspicious of Wormold at the Agency. One agent comments to C that the drawings look like parts of a vacuum cleaner, enlarged. Hawthorne hears this while he is behind C, and realizes what Guinness is sending, but he keeps quiet.Captain Segura is aware, after hearing of Jims approaches to local fellows, that Jim was recruiting spies, but he bides his time, as his interest is getting Jim's consent for him to marry Milly. Milly accepts some courting, but her interests are rather with her horse rather than marrying.Dr. Hasselbacher, tempted by Jims reports of easy money in exchange for false information, also starts to sell lies, judging that no significant harm results from the deception.Wormolds originally harmless fraud eventually becomes dangerous. As British Intelligence agencies begin to take his work seriously, so does the other side, and thus Wormold is a wanted man, dead or alive.Spys from the other side begin to decode his cables and start disrupting his network. One of the men whom Wormold pretended was one of his agents dies in a suspicious accident. An engineer named Cifuentes (Grégoire Aslan) whom Jim approached multiple times at the country club is kidnapped and dropped off at Jims doorstep bound and gagged. These events give London the impression that Wormold's networks are under attack.Hawthorne has Jim go to Jamaica for consultations, where he warns him that Jim's discovery of military secrets is so impressive that the other sides agents have decided to silence him by assassination, most likely by poisoning at a banquet Jim has to attend as part of his vacuum cleaner business. Hawthorne instructs Jim in a variety of techniques to avoid being poisoned by food or drink.Jim manages to figure out the assassin is none other than a friendly man he met on the flight to Kingston, but he is unable to prevent the murder of his friend Dr. Hasselbacher.In seeking to avenge his friend, Jim arranges to have a meeting with Segura, ostensibly to discuss the possible courtship of Milly. Jim must get Segura so drunk that he passes out, so he can steal a loaded gun. As both of them are avid checkers players, he arranges a game of checkers to be played with miniature bottles of liquor. Each time one is captured, it must be opened and drunk immediately. As the captain is in fact a better player, the Captain gets totally, drunk, and Jim takes the gun to kill the would be assassin.Pretending friendship, he has made arrangements to go out on the town with the assassin, using himself as a decoy, assuming that the assassin will use the occasion to have him ambushed and killed by others somewhere. He tells the assassin they will be going to a couple of semi clandestine night clubs, giving their names, but in fact he goes to others, so the ambushers are sent to the wrong place, the assassin is isolated, and Jim shoots him with Seguras gun at the door of a brothel.Captain Segura wakes from his drunken binge unaware of what happened. The next day, however, after Jim and Milly attend Hasselbachers funeral, the captain orders Jim deported, and he must return to London.He tells all details of what he has done to Beatrice, who decides to quit the spy business and return to London with him. Meantime, Beatrice and Milly have become friends, Milly accepts Beatrice as a future stepmother.Accompanied by Beatrice and Milly, Jim goes to a meeting with C and other spy bosses in London. While he is waiting to be seen, the officials discuss what they should do with him. To reveal to the Prime Minister and the other top brass that Jim concocted all his intelligence would have a damaging effect on the intelligence aparatus, so they come up with a solution. A story is fabricated, claiming the hardware that Jim's agent had seen had since been dismantled. Wormold is told he is to receive an O.B.E, and the secret service offers him a position teaching espionage classes to new recruits in London. With this money, he can afford to send Milly to the fancy school in Switzerland.

Tags: comedy, murder

Review:
No, tonight will be Our Man in Havana, the blackest of black comedies, directed by Carol Reed from Graham Greene's novel.
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.
This superb noir comedy has wonderful depth and balance -- based on a fine novel, well-scripted, spectacularly well-lit and photographed, and vwey well performed, particularly by Alec Guiness and Ernie Kovacs, who was virtually as good an actor as he was a comedian.
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!
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.
Director Carol Reed famously made a spy film, "The Third Man," which blended tragedy and comedy in equal measure.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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 director is the legendary Carol Reed (The Third Man) and between Guiness and him (and Greene), the movie has a British tilt--indeed, it was filmed mostly in Havana with followup work in Shepparton Studios, London.
Director Carol Reed, who had worked with the author on two previous occasions – on 'The Fallen Idol (1948)' and 'The Third Man (1949)' – masterfully brings Greene's story to life, with an extraordinary liveliness only enhanced by the on-location filming in Havana, Cuba.Jim Wormald (Alec Guinness) is a British citizen who has lived in Cuba for fifteen years, and now, despite a rocky political climate, considers it home.
Meanwhile, corrupt Cuban dictator Captain Segura (Ernie Kovacs), who covets the virginal Milly, begins to suspect that Wormald isn't as harmless as he had always seemed.In post-revolutionary Cuba, Greene's novel was looked upon favourably for its depiction of the corrupt dictatorship of former leader Fulgencio Batista, but Fidel Castro complained that it didn't accurately capture the brutality of his reign.
"I had not wanted too black a background for a light-hearted comedy, but those who suffered during the years of dictatorship could hardly be expected to appreciate that my real subject was the absurdity of the British agent and not the justice of a revolution." It is, indeed, the British who come off second-best in Greene's satire.
"Our Man in Havana" has all of the elements of a sure-fire classic: a cast that includes Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Noel Coward, a very lovely Maureen O'Hara and Ralph Richardson; a screenplay by Graham Greene adapted from his own novel; and direction by Carol Reed, who had tackled Greene before and made one of the best films in history ("The Third Man").So why doesn't "Our Man in Havana" entirely work?
Guinness plays a vacuum cleaner salesman living in Havana who gets recruited by the British secret service to do spy work for them.
The usual way this happens is through love or lust, but this movie has a subtler and darker theme--an amusing fantasy, in a dictatorship, turns into something seriously and horribly real.Attracted by the money that secret-service work will bring, but clueless as to how to do it, Wormold (Alec Guinness), a vacuum-cleaner salesman, makes up reports inspired by comic strips.
Wormold's spy stories result in misunderstanding, then embarrassment, then murder, until he is put in a position where, though it's the last thing he wants, he has to become a hero, perhaps a dead one.An irony that went unappreciated at the time was of Alec Guinness expressing his disgust of homosexuals in one scene and, in another, being comically mistaken for one (in a maneuver shown him by Noel Coward!).Not many big laughs, but lots and lots of knowing and rueful smiles are what this movie inspires--it's a very dry martini in a world of brightly coloured alcopops..
Alec Guiness is a not so bright vacuum cleaner salesman living in Havana recruited as a spy by British operative Noel Coward.
Coward is particularly funny as he keeps insisting that Guiness will make a great spy even though the only thing he seems to be able to produce are vacuum cleaner blueprints he passes off as bomb making instructions.
Instead of spying, Guiness spends most of his time drinking at the country club, which he can finally afford to join!Guiness is great and the terrific supporting cast includes Burl Ives as a wily American ex-patriot, Jo Morrow as Guiness's infinitely understanding daughter, and Ernie Kovacs, looking very Fidel-like, as a lecherous Cuban cop.
Graham Greene's novel "Our Man in Havana" was well adapted by him for this 1959 film of the same name.
It stars Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward and Ralph Richardson - quite a cast.
The acting is excellent, though some have mentioned that Maureen O'Hara was too much star power for the role she plays - that's really a minor criticism.Another great Guiness film..
If you can get past the absurd storyline that has ALEC GUINESS pretending to be a spy and even inventing his fellow agents so that he can pose as the real thing for NOEL COWARD and RALPH RICHARDSON--well, it's a tall order.
It's an odd mixture of acting styles and it all seems more than a little foolish by the time Alec has become such a valuable "spy" that the Russians want to assassinate him.The best scenes are after Guiness realizes that things have gone too far and someone actually intends to kill him at a banquet he is forced to attend.
Unfortunately, RALPH RICHARDSON is completely wasted in a nothing role but NOEL COWARD has a fine time with an amusing part as the man who recruits Guiness.ERNIE KOVACS is surprisingly well cast as a member of the police force during the last days of the Battista regime, before the revolution.
ALEC GUINESS gives a marvelous performance as the reluctant spy who finds himself in hot water when he decides to play the game the way Ives told him to.
MI6 always on the lookout for agents and they can be recruited in a variety of ways spots expatriate vacuum cleaner salesman Alec Guinness living in Havana with his daughter Jo Morrow is scraping by on his job and it's expensive sending Morrow to a Catholic Convent school.Along comes Noel Coward from British Intelligence with a proposition some extra income to work for them and recruit other agents and send back reports on loose information he picks up.
Yet though some laughs are here, it gets deadly serious when the other side expresses an interest in killing Guinness because his reports to British Intelligence are giving the reputation to Our Man In Havana as one of the best they have.One thing the British take pride in is their spy service.
The film is called " Our Man in Havana " and is the story of the British secret service prior to the first James Bond movie.
Finding one Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness) a British subject, running a vacuum sales shop, he enlists him to create a spy network complete with agents and code names.
Before the revolution in Cuba, a vacuum cleaner salesman is recruited by the British Secret Service for the title role.
A marvelous cast is wasted, including Guinness as the recruited spy hoping to make a quick buck, Coward as his recruiter, O'Hara as his devoted secretary, and Richardson as a befuddled Secret Service superior.
Revolution or not, Carol Reed here takes a holiday from directing serious films and along with Graham Greene as screenwriter concentrates on sending up espionage thrillers.
Alec Guinness is comfortably at home in the role of as Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman for Hoover who suddenly has the role of secret agent thrust upon him.
The lovely Maureen O'Hara as the agent sent from London to assist our man in Havana seems lost, or at least as if she is in another movie, a romantic spy drama perhaps.
Ives was not much of an actor, but his role here is minor.Looking back at it now, this film seems to fall in the Ealing comedy tradition - little man triumphs over the powers that be - though of a glossier and more expensive kind than usual as Columbia was paying the bills.
Set in pre Castro Cuba, vacuum cleaner retailer Alec Guinness is recruited by the inept British Secret Service, in the form of the wonderful Noel Coward, to create and run a spy ring for them.
#1 make it as a comedy with slapstick humor and sarcastic lines and comedic actors and do so in the vein of Hot Shots or Police Squad.#2 make it in a serious manner more akin to the later Alec Guinness films such as the Spy who came in from the Cold.
Carol Reed echoes the musical score and, at least latterly, the dynamic compositions of earlier Graham Greene collaboration The Third Man in this 1959 Cuba-set spy outing.
Alec Guiness is well cast as Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman covertly recruited by a British Intelligence agent (Noel Coward).
Reed's film version isn't realistic, not the situation and not the characters.I never, for a moment, believed in Alec Guiness' Wormold; not in the easy-going way in which he took to the task in hand like a duck to water nor in his later development of a conscience.
Alec Guinness, a vacuum cleaner salesman, is forced to be a British spy for his country while he is living in Havana, but has nothing interesting to offer, (why me he asks) when good friend Burl Ives tells him to embellish his accounts of peoples' activities and spice up his reports.
Ralph Richardson, Noel Coward, and Ernie Kovacs costar in this amusing little story, which goes a long way with the stars' credible acting and the charm and irresistible personality of Sir Alec Guinness.
Alec Guinness as ever, is excellent, as is Noel Coward and Ralph Richardson.The re-voles around Jim Wormold(Alec Guinness) as a vacuum cleaner salesman in pre-revolutionary Havana.
As described here previously by McVouty, this movie is a true gem - I had the pleasure of seeing it projected at a local art house theater, and was blown away by Alec Guinness' performance, as well as the excellent black & white cinematography, by none other than Robert Krasker; the same writer/director/cinematographer team that created "The 3rd Man", here again created a wonderful film.
The running gag -- vacuum cleaners as secret weapons -- frames the comedy that turns black.Noël Coward and Ralph Richardson, who plays "C" before there was an "M," are suitably farcical.
Alex Guiness, (Jim Wormold) is a vacuum cleaner salesman and he gets involved with a spy system which originates from London, England who need a man to operate from Havana and Jim Wormold is their man.
Greene believed in the Christian version of treating mankind, not a Godless secularized version.I recently saw this film on TCM, and the introduction of the role played by Alec Guiness was that he was a "clueless" vacuum sweeper salesman.
The whole of the British Secret Service is played for a fool when Guiness, at the suggestion of his friend, a German Doctor played by Burl Ives, suggests that he invent agents for his spy ring.
Ives moralizes that Guiness will not be doing anything immoral because countries feel obligated to play a game and spy on each other, and it might has well be him who gets paid.Ernie Kovacs plays the authority figure for the Batista dictatorship that was about to fall to Castro.
Set in Cuba shortly before the revolution (and filmed there after), Our Man in Havana stars Alec Guinness as a man reluctantly persuaded to spy for Britain.
But that just makes the drama weaker; Burl Ives character is never properly explored, and a romance late in the film flowers out of virtually nothing.The movie is well-filmed (at times it's reminiscent in style to director Carol Reed's masterwork The Third Man) and has some good performances (Ernie Kovacs is quite good as a genial yet brutal police captain), but much of it feels like a lost opportunity to push it's brilliant satirical premise to the dark comedy it seems so capable of..
Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness) is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter Milly (Jo Morrow).
So he takes a job from British secret agent Hawthorne (Noel Coward) to recruit people for his spy network.
Keeping this in mind one easily has the situation in OUR MAN IN HAVANA.Alec Guinness is Wormold, an Englishman who runs a vacuum cleaner agency in Havana, Cuba in the late 1950s (actually before Castro seized power).
He and director Sir Carol Reed (THE THIRD MAN's director) disagreed on how Guinness should play Wormold (his character), and Sir Alec said he lost interest in it.
He was capable of clunkers too, like "The Public Eye." This one is somewhere in between but probably closer to "The Third Man." At any rate, it's light years ahead of most of the junk showing up on screens today, though they cost a million times more.Alec Guiness, in a performance both effective and casual, runs a vacuum cleaner shop in Bautista's Havana.
Helped by an outstanding script and the magnificent Noel Coward, this is one of Guinness' more underrated performances.Jim Wormold (Guinness) is a vacuum cleaner salesman in pre-Castro Cuba.
As British Intelligence agencies begin to take his work seriously, as do their enemies spies and soon Wormold is a wanted man, dead or alive.Packed full of classic lines and moments (a 'Made In Japan' moment bringing particular pleasure), 'Our Man in Havana' is an entertaining affair with countless different twists and turns on route to it's eventual conclusion.Helped primarily by an on form Guinness, the film is expertly written by Graham Greene, delivered by Carol Reed and consistently enjoyable.
This was the right decision to make because it's questionable whether the film's tension could have been so good otherwise.Led from the front by Alec Guinness, 'Our Man in Havana' is a superb piece of cinema.
OUR MAN IN HAVANA is a fairly typical British satire of the spy genre, with Alec Guinness playing his usual hapless character whose supposedly clever plans lead him into hot water.
Guinness plays a salesman living in Cuba who is tasked with becoming British spy, but when he starts making up fake identities to impress his employers, he soon finds the situation spiralling out of control.
Jo Morrow is pathetic as Guiness' daughter and quickly disappeared off the cinematic radar; Ernie Kovacs is fine as Segura, the nearest thing to a heavy, Burl Ives is competent and Ralph Richardson would have walked away with the movie were it not for Coward.
Carol Reed (both author, director and the main actors were British, by the way), beautiful black-and-white cinematography, especially impressive since the film was shot in Cuba on authentic locations.
The checker game with the whiskey and bourbon between Alec Guiness and Ernie Kovacs is one of the great "dark" comedy scenes of all time.
Guinness is in the lead role as the British secret service's recruited man in Havana.