Our Man in Havana

It’s the Cold War.  The fading British empire, in cahoots with the new American empire, needs a spy in Havana, Cuba.  Intelligence is vital to the nation.  The Cuban government is threatened by revolution.  So the spy you choose is . . . a vacuum salesman.

Our Man in Havana is the antithesis of the myth of James Bond.  It is Graham Greene’s take on the art of spycraft, which, because 20th century nation-states are involved, is inefficient, stupid, and self-serving.  Greene assumes that a government spy is concerned with the only incentive he has, which is to keep himself on the government payroll.  That means pleasing his superiors.  And that’s where our vacuum salesman, played by Alec Guinness, comes in.

Guinness is a fairly simple man with an imagination and a daughter who’s being pursued by an important Cuban government official.  He’s approached by the British Secret Service to serve as a contact, someone who will gather information and recruit others to gather information for the British.  The lure is money — Guinness wants to please his daughter, and himself, with a wealthy lifestyle.  He’d like to join the local country club.  So he becomes a secret agent.

Of course Guinness is incompetent.  Unable to approach anyone, let alone recruit them, Guinness resorts to making up intelligence.  Fantastic, science-fiction-like intelligence, in fact.  And of course the British Secret Service believe him.

The best parts of Our Man in Havana apparently derive from Graham Greene’s script.  There are a host of good lines, comments on modernity, which the actors do not seem to understand.  Burl Ives, as an ex-pat German doctor, is particularly inept as Guinness’ friend.  Maureen O’Hara is not suitable to her part, and so the movie — poorly cast except for Guinness — seems uneven and inconsistent in tone.

Yet anyone paying close attention can see what Greene was getting at.  Guinness becomes part of the bureaucracy of spycraft, in which each member, in order to please his superiors, feels free to lie to them.  Each of them has risen above their highest level of competence, and in the end they are all rewarded for that incompetence.  Surely this movie, unlike the dozens of spy thrillers that come out each other, is a worthy antidote to the myth of the superspy — the James Bonds, Jack Bauers, Jack Ryans, who are super-competent individual men who end up saving the world.  No, Greene says.  The average man in the bureaucracy is only after one thing — to serve himself.

Entertainment: 6

Intelligence: 8

Morality: —