Carol Reed (1959)
Graham Greene did the adaptation of his novel, which is one of his ‘entertainments’ The result is entertaining but this satire of espionage now seems less original than it probably was at the time; and the tone of the piece is slippery. It moves uncomfortably between cool lampoon of the characters and melodramatic reproof of the consequences of their behaviour, with a dollop of perfunctory romance on the side. The protagonist Wormold is an expatriate vacuum cleaner salesman in the Cuban capital. Short of cash to support the lifestyle of his extravagant daughter, he agrees to be recruited by British intelligence. Clueless in his new role, he starts inventing information for the consumption of his paymasters. As Wormold, Guinness doesn’t stoop to the condescending conception of a ‘little man’ that his character’s surname implies; that’s to the actor’s credit but it makes the early scenes less clear cut than they might have been if he’d adopted the same approach as the writer. As the story progresses, Guinness’s comic resource chimes more satisfyingly with Wormold’s efforts to keep intact his tangled web of deceptions.
Noel Coward gives one of his best-known screen performances as Hawthorne, the homburg-hatted, rolled umbrella-brandishing agent who recruits Wormold. Performance – rather than characterisation – is the word: a little of Coward’s stylised, self-congratulatory presence goes a long way when he’s (supposed to be) acting rather than doing cabaret – and this is far from a cameo. Although it’s the kind of turn that gets praised for its ‘quintessential Englishness’, Coward’s gestural and vocal theatricality actually undermines the comic potential of the character. (Ralph Richardson’s appearance – in the smaller part of Coward’s boss in London – is enough to make you feel that his ability to combine anonymity and eccentricity would have made Hawthorne into something richer and more enjoyable.) I think my resistance to Coward – and my feeling that he epitomised what much of the NFT audience liked best about Our Man in Havana – kept me at a rather hostile distance from the whole film.
There are some good set pieces: a hoover salesmen’s luncheon at which Wormold has to stay one step ahead of attempts to poison him; and his alcoholic game of checkers against the local police chief Segura – played by Ernie Kovacs, whose relaxed corruptness is skilful and witty. (The police chief is also Wormold’s daughter’s suitor.) Good performances too from Burl Ives, Jose Prieto, Paul Rogers and others. Jo Morrow seems too deliberate and slow-moving, both physically and temperamentally, as the daughter. Maureen O’Hara is elegant and dull in the role of the spy-secretary who falls in love with Wormold (as he does with her): O’Hara does an excessive amount of clutching her upper arms to signal ‘emotion’. Overall, Carol Reed’s work here with a stellar cast is less satisfying than his achievements with lesser names in earlier films. But Reed certainly brings the streets of Havana to life: the film is set before the revolution that brought Castro to power but it was shot during the early months of the new regime. Given the nature of the material, the fact that (according to the NFT programme notes) the new government kept checking that Reed and Greene weren’t up to reactionary mischief supplies Our Man in Havana with an extra, unintended comic and political dimension.
16 September 2006
