There are a couple of scenes in Carol Reed's brilliant 1959 black comedy
Our Man in Havana that remind me of some of the reasons I love films from the 1940s to the 1960s so much. Both are minor interactions that occur between characters. In the first scene, a turboprop Vickers passenger plane crosses the Caribbean between Jamaica and Havana. A man lights up his pipe as a stewardess (ahem....excuse me, flight attendant) walks the aisle. She gently scolds him for the act. "Cigarettes only, please" she reminds him. He shrugs and proceeds to make the switch.
The second scene involves Alec Guiness's character Jim Wormold, the titular "man" in Havana, who realizes he is being stalked by Soviet spies and needs a weapon. He is a British expat who has lived for many years in pre-revolutionary Cuba, owns a vacuum cleaner store, and guns are not to be found for sale. So he sits at his kitchen table desperately cutting off the tops of boxes of American corn pops breakfast cereal that advertise prominently on the back "12 tops and you get a super-duper AIR GUN".
Those were the days. What kid in the 60s and 70s doesn't remember wanting an air rifle. We called them BB Guns but let's face it....these babies projected pellets with enough force to blast the crap out of whatever you fired it at. Being the little dumbshits we were, that was sometimes each other, although we had sense enough to know not to go for a face shot. You could put an eye out with that thing, but a butt shot was the funniest thing ever. Birds and squirrels were the preferred targets, and cans and bottles, and windows in old sheds. And, of course, any rat-bastard Commies brave enough to invade the neighborhood....so, yeah, Wormold had the right idea.
Cigarettes on airplanes and air rifles as home defense are just two of the magical little touches sprinkled throughout
Our Man in Havana. Written by Graham Greene based on his novel, this spy comedy uses humor to skewer the intelligence "game" and like all great satires there are layers of truth buried within waiting to be peeled back in the most comic (and sometimes tragic) ways possible. Greene was the perfect person to do the peeling, since he had worked extensively for Britain's MI6 during the Second World War and after. Many of Greene's most famous works, including his probably best known novel
The Quiet American, wove into their fabric the places he visited and the people he met.
As an interesting historical footnote, Greene's supervisor and friend at MI6 was Kim Philby, later to be revealed as one of the most damaging Soviet moles and member of the Cambridge Five (another of Philby's agents was John le Carre, whom Philby outed to the Soviets ending the future spy novelist's MI6 career).
Director Carol Reed hits all the right notes in
Our Man in Havana. The cast is stellar. Alec Guiness is memorable as the hapless Wormold. His vacuum cleaner business isn't as secure as it used to be since the revolution began and isn't providing him with enough income to grant the desires of his spoiled teenage daughter, whose dream is to join the Havana Country Club and own a horse. Enter Noel Coward as Hawthorne, a nattily dressed British spy who wears a crisply knotted tie in the tropical heat and carries an umbrella even when it isn't raining. Hawthorne recruits Wormold into MI6 to be their main agent in Havana, deciding the vacuum cleaner proprietor is qualified based solely on being British and a WWII veteran who gave loyal service. Operating out of Jamaica, Hawthorne has been sent to Cuba to build up an intelligence network on the island on short notice, as the revolution is growing and the Communists appear to be gaining the upper hand.
Wormold accepts based on the promise of regular and generous paychecks. And that is where the comic trouble - and onion-peeling of Greene's layers of truth - proceed to make life hell for poor Wormold. MI6 expects results from Wormold, who is declared the main agent in Havana, however woefully untrained and clueless he may be. Expected to build up his own network of agents and contacts and feed gathered information back to London, Wormold decides it is just easier to make it all up to keep London happy and the checks coming.
Important characters to the story include the wonderful Burl Ives as Wormold's friend and fellow expatriate Dr. Hasselbacher. The doctor is a German, a medical man who served the Kaiser in the First World War and fled Germany during the Nazi regime. He lives the indolent life in Havana and runs a clinic when he isn't holding court at a table in the local cantina. "There is always time for Scotch", he tells Wormold, and judging from his girth and declining health, there has been a lot of time for that. Hasselbacher is another in a line of unforgettable characters played by Ives, prone to bouts of melancholy, sometimes dressing in his old uniform complete with picklehaube helmet, and always trying to stay one step ahead of the local police. That police force is led by Captain Segura (played by veteran character actor Ernie Kovacs), who keeps his eyes and ears close to the street in his quest to stamp out revolutionary fervor in Havana. His hands are full, because revolutionary sympathies run high and Castro's supporters and Soviet agents are everywhere. Slightly buffoonish but dangerous, Segura has his eye on Wormold's lovely daughter.
And then there is Maureen O'Hara, sent out by MI6 to be Wormold's secretary. In one of her best roles, Maureen is level headed and dedicated, and much comic mayhem ensues as Wormold works her into his fabricated network without her knowledge.
Our Man in Havana is a black and white CinemaScope gem, famously filmed on location in Havana while the actual revolution was happening. This is one film that begs for a commentary and my only disappointment is that there isn't one. The PQ is marvelous, the soundtrack is engaging with its current of Latin rhythms underpinning the visuals, and the writing is excellent. Tragedy and hilarity abound in this dark little Cold War comedy, which pulls absurdity out of real world events where agents get shot, forced coercion has deadly results, lies have consequences, and betrayals are waiting in the shadows. Somehow smoking on airliners and pellet guns advertised on cereal boxes seem harmless by comparison; looking back on films like this, we recognize how they serve as touchstones in our cinema history and reminders of how times have changed. Highly Recommended.
Note: all images above are taken from the internet and not the actual disc.
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