Our Man in Havana

I've stated on several occasions before that I'm not the biggest fan of those "serious" 1960s spy movies. One (well, technically not a 1960s film) that's not quite so serious, although also not a spoof like the Matt Helm movies, is the 1959 film Our Man in Havana. I had actually never seen it before, so when I noticed it was available on one of the streaming services, I decided to watch.

The movie informs us that it was set before the "recent" revolution in Cuba finally succeeded -- the movie was made on location in Cuba but based on a 1958 book by author Graham Greene. It tells the story of James Wormold (Alec Guinness), who is working as a vacuum cleaner salesman for a British company's Havana office. You would think that this is a job that doesn't pay all that much money, and to make matters worse, James is a widower with a teenaged daughter Milly (Jo Morrow) who has expensive tastes.

Somebody in MI6 back in London, most likely spymaster "C" (Ralph Richardson) has come up with the brilliant idea that they should recruit spies from among normal people, because apparently the professional spies aren't getting the job done and all the professionals on the other side know who the British professionals are, anyway. So the head spy in the Caribbean, Hawthorne (Noël Coward), code number 59200, approaches Wormorld with a proposition to do some spying for his motherland. Wormold isn't so sure, but he could use the extra money, so he takes up the offer.

Of course, part of what is supposed to be the humor in the movie is that Wormold has no idea what he's doing, since he hasn't been given much instruction by Hawthorne. And Wormold is expected to recruit his own spies, like some sort of twisted multi-level marketing scheme. So after a bit of picking the mind of a friend, the American doctor Hasselbacher (Burl Ives), Wormold decides that he's just going to make crap up.

But for better or worse, Wormold is good at coming up with plausible secrets. The folks back in London believe the secrets, while the Cubans think Wormold has come up with something even though he hasn't. With that in mind, the British send a secretary, Beatrice (Maureen O'Hara), out into the field to assist Wormold. The Cubans, meanwhile, assassinate of one Wormold's underlings, and the Cuban authorites in the form of Segura (Ernie Kovacs) start to put the pressure on Wormold. Wouldn't it just be easier to declare him persona non grata and deport him back to the UK?

The big problem I had with Our Man in Havana is that it felt like one of those stories that was trying to be too clever by half, and as a result winds up not being all that great, despite the presence of a pretty good cast. It's not as bad in that regards as the grimmer spy tales of the 1960s, but it still didn't work for me. But because of the cast, Our Man in Havana is one of those movies you're definitely going to want to watch and judge for yourself.