OUR MAN IN HAVANA
UK, 1959, 111 minutes, Black and white.
Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O’ Hara, Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward, Ralph Richardson, Jo Morrow, Gregoire Aslan, Paul Rogers, Raymond Huntley, Ferdy Maine, Maurice Denham.
Directed by Carol Reed.
Our Man in Havana was actually filmed in Cuba just after the revolution and before Fidel Castro’s aligning his country to the Soviet Union. It was said that he was in favour of the film because it denounced British and American imperialism.
The film was directed by Carol Reed who had had great success with Graham Greene’s stories, The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. Greene wrote the original novel as well as the screenplay for the film.
Alec Guinness appears as a vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba in the 1950s, in debt, accepting a job with the intelligence service which complicates his life and causes him to be deceptive and dishonest. His main deceit is inventing stories and recruiting agents and secret constructions which he passes on to the authorities. Alec Guinness is very good in this role (reminiscent of the central character of The Tailor of Panama) and reminds us that Alec Guiness was Smiley in so many adaptations of John le Carre’s stories.
There is an excellent supporting cast including Ralph Richardson as C., Burl Ives, Noel Coward and Maureen O’ Hara.
1. The implications of the title? British secret agents? The irony of the title in view of the film? Grahame Greene's view of the secret agent? Graham Greene's view in general terms of human beings and life?
2. Was this film comedy or was it serious? Or both? Was it a satire on the British or on human life? Why?
3. Comment on the presentation of the British context: Hawthorne and his recruiting methods for agents in Cuba, C and his methods of running the foreign office, the styles of being at war, the games of being at war and spying, the mixture of seriousness and comedy in serious business, the irony of getting the agent out and decorating him with an empty honour?
4. The character of Jim Wormold: as an ordinary man in the street, in himself, his relationship with his daughter, her spending, his business in Havana, his fantasies, his need and love for money, his not taking the spying proposition seriously, his fooling the agencies, his response to the dangers when he realised that others are taking it as reality, his dilemma in facing such crisis and situation, his response to the final honours back in England? Was he a good man? Was he an admirable man? Or was he just the ordinary man neither good nor bad? How clearly was the audience meant to identify with him?
5. How effective a parable of the dangers of little men dreaming was this film? Why?
6. How did the film change its mood from lightness to deadly seriousness? taking Doctor Hassalbacher as a focus of this: his friendship with Wormold and then his being killed?
7. The picture of Cuba before Castro? the secret police the spying, the assassinations? The personality of Segura, Carter as working to assassinate Wormold? The atmosphere of fear?
8. What did Beatrice contribute to the film? Just a romantic heroine? Or was she integral to the plot? Wormold's relationship to her?
9. How successful was the film as entertainment and interesting in its attention to details: the encounter between Hawthorn and Wormold for recruiting, Wormold's attention to his plans and the use of the vacuum cleaners and his dealings with people, the incidents with Carter?
10. By the end of the film how serious was it and how comical insofar as comedy presents people as they are, making fun of them so that the audience can laugh with them instead of at them? Was this a good comedy of this kind?
