Retrospective: Our Man in Havana (Patreon)

Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana impressed me as an entertaining Douglas Adamsesque piece of satire, but it floored me as a depiction of spycraft. It is, alarmingly, the most accurate spy novel I've ever read. A vacuum cleaner salesman making up intelligence based on his vacuum designs, ultimately leading to massive geopolitical shifts, is about as absurd as the story of how the U.S. invaded Iraq (and the behind-the-scenes on that decision is even stupider than what Bush did in public).

As soon as I finished reading the book, I popped on Carol Reed's film movie Our Man in Havana. For some reason, it didn't occur to me that Carol Reed shooting a Graham Greene script essentially made Our Man in Havana a sequel to The Third Man. Once I realized that, I not only got enthused about the movie but became downright cozy with it. Is there such a thing as a cozy spy thriller? I guess that would be Bond. Is there a good version of that?

Regardless, Our Man in Havana is a pleasant little romp — halfway between an Ealing movie and Dr. Strangelove. It lacks the formalism and drama of either one, but it's a jovial, fun little picture. Alec Guinness gives Wormold more dignity than the book does. Our Man in Havana cleanly cuts through the boundary between Greene's Catholic Work and his spy novels — he's always telling stories about weird little guys plagued by the threat of God's love. There's not much of that in the movie, but what we do have is fun. Bonus points for Noel Coward being a menace and Burl Ives' failure of a German accent.