Graham Greene wrote this witty comedy inspired by Cold War paranoia. Jim Wormald (Alec Guiness) is an Englishman selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba on the cusp of the revolution. Hawthorne (Noel Coward), a British intelligence agent, is looking for information on Cuban affairs and recruits Jim to act as a spy. Jim has no experience in espionage and no useful knowledge to pass along, but Hawthorne is willing to pay for his services, and since Jim's daughter Milly (Jo Morrow) has expensive tastes, he can use the money. To keep Hawthorne happy (and his paychecks coming in), he turns in reports on the Cuban revolution that are copied from public documents, "hires" additional agents who don't exist, and presents blueprints of secret weapons that are actually schematics of his carpet sweepers. However, Hawthorne and associate "C" (Ralph Richardson) think that Jim is doing splendid work and encourage him to continue; meanwhile, Capt. Segura (Ernie Kovacs), the elegantly corrupt chief of police, has been fooled by Jim's charade into believing he's a real spy -- and has also become attracted to Milly. Our Man in Havana also features Burl Ives and Maureen O'Hara in supporting roles. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
One of British director Carol Reed's lesser-known films -- due in part to its unavailability on video -- Our Man in Havana (1960) nevertheless sports the dry wit, intrigue, and visual beauty that distinguished his most famous work. Scripted, like The Third Man (1949), by Graham Greene from his own novel, Our Man in Havana keenly satirizes the British espionage system, awash in absurd bureaucracy and even more absurd code names, as Alec Guinness evocatively named Havana vacuum cleaner salesman Wormold is enlisted by Noel Coward's hysterically obvious spook to go undercover. Reed, Greene, Guinness, and an international cast, including Ernie Kovacs as a corrupt Cuban police chief, mine humor out of Guinness' various ruses, including a judicious use of his vacuum designs to bilk the Brits for all they're worth. The tone turns jarringly dark once events force Guinness to tap his inner 007, but Reed manages to pull off the film with aplomb, assisted by the fascinating backdrop of Havana itself shot on-location (despite the political instability) in luminous widescreen black-and-white. Rather than greeted as a return to form for Reed, however, Our Man in Havana's poor reception only compounded his late-'50s decline. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
In pre-CastroCuba James Wormold (Guinness), a vacuum cleaner salesman, is recruited by Hawthorne (Coward) of the British Secret Service to be their Havana operative. Instead of recruiting his own agents, Wormold invents agents from men he knows only by sight, and sketches "plans" for a rocket-launching pad based on vacuum parts to increase his value to the service and to procure more money for himself and his expensive daughter Milly. Because his importance grows, he is sent a secretary, Beatrice (O'Hara), and a radioman from London to be under his command. With their arrival it becomes much harder for Wormold to maintain his facade. However, when they do, all of his imagined information begins to come true. One of his "agents" is killed, and he is himself targeted for assassination. He admits what he's done to his secretary, and is recalled to London. At the film's conclusion, rather than telling the truth to the prime minister and other military intelligence services, Wormold's commanders (led by Richardson) agree to fabricate a story claiming his imagined machines had been dismantled, bestow honors on Wormold, and offer him a position teaching espionage classes in London.
Production
It was actually filmed in Havana. The new Cuban government was willing to have a movie made that showed the corrupt old regime along with meddling foreign spies.
