Peter Viney's Blog

Produced and Directed By Carol Reed
Screenplay by Graham Greene
Based on the novel by Graham Greene
Music by Frank Deniz / Laurence Deniz
Cinematography by Oswald Morris

December 1959 UK / January 1960 USA

CAST

Alec Guinness – Jim Wormwold
Burl Ives – Dr Hasselbacher
Maureen O’Hara – Beatrice Severn
Ernie Kovacs- Captain Segura
Noël Coward – Hawthorne
Ralph Richardson – C
Jo Morrow – Milly Wormwold
Gregoire Aslan – Cifuentes
Paul Rogers – Hubert Carter
Raymond Huntley- General
Ferdy Mayne – Prof. Sanchez
Maurice Denham – Admiral
Jose Prieto- Lopez
Duncan MacRae- MacDougal
Gerik Schjelderrup- Svenson
Hugh Manning- Officer
Maxine Audley- Teresa
John le Mesurier – head waiter

The 60s Revisited Series …

Is it 1960s? A December 1959 release meant few saw it until the 60s. I first saw it a school film club circa 1964.

It was a knight-laden production with the usual thespian suspects … Sir Alec Guinness, Sir Noël Coward, Sir Ralph Richardson, with some striking night-laden cinematography in black and white.

Graham Greene adapted his own novel, with Carol Reed directing. The novel was only published in 1958, and the film was in pre-production within the same year. Greene had worked in British Intelligence in the war, and had originally drafted the novel set in Estonia, before switching to Cuba. The novel and film were prescient being set just before Castro’s revolution, with spies and counter-spies. Not only that, but it was filmed in Havana, just after the revolution with Castro’s permission. He was photographed with Alec Guinness and Maureen O’Hara during their seven weeks in Havana.

Castro thought it reflected badly on the Batista regime and asked that they play up scenes showing the thuggery of Batista’s police.

Despite “reservations about the political unrest”, Greene and Reed decided to shoot exteriors Our Man In Havana on location in Cuba, after visiting the capital late in 1958. But shortly after their visit, the Batista regime was overthrown by the forces of Fidel Castro. The new administration was happy enough to allow production to proceed early in 1959, but not exactly as originally envisaged. Their main concern was that the film should contain “nothing disparaging” to the new regime; and Reed consequently revealed to The Daily Telegraph that “39 changes had been made in the script at the insistence of the Cuban government”.
Vic Pratt, BFI website, 27 October 2015

The atomic weapons theme was nearly three years ahead of the Cuban Missile crisis.

As well as the moody carefully-lit night scenes, we get the brightly lit gleaming daytime Cuba too. It’s a visual delight. I was particularly impressed by the depth and rich detail of the shots – you’re in a room but you see through the open balcony windows across the street to the balcony opposite, with things happening. The moody night shots with complex lighting obviously reference The Third Man.

The plot: Jim Wormwold (Alec Guinness) is a vacuum cleaner salesman, though being British he unashamedly calls it ‘hoover’ with a small h. His daughter Milly (Jo Morrow) is fond of horses and expensive living and attends a Catholic school. She is being pursued by the nasty chief of police, Captain Segura (Ernie Kovacs).

Milly: He tortures people … but he never touches me.

Jim’s doctor friend is Dr Hasselbacher, played by Burl Ives with a German accent.

Jim is approached by Hawthorne (Noël Coward) who is Head of the British Secret service in the Caribbean. Hawthorne recruits him as an agent … reporting on anything and everything. Wormwold badly needs the money and agrees. He has to recruit a network of agents and is singularly unsuccessful.

Dr Hasselbacher, who appears to be in a similar business, but we don’t know who for, advises him to invent a team of agents and claim money for them. Wormwold does so, using the names of real people. London then wants to see results, so Wormwold draws elaborate weapons, which look suspiciously like bits of a vacuum cleaner. London is fooled.

So C, the head of the Secret Service (Ralph Richardson) decides to send him an agent posing as a secretary, Beatrice Severn (Maureen O’Hara) and a Radio operator.

Wormwold’s network is suddenly big business … until one of the men whose names he borrowed, a Cubana Airways pilot, turns up murdered outside his shop.

Then Wormwold flies to Jamaica to meet Hawthorne, only to be told he will be poisoned at a banquet with the US Ambassador. He has to work out who the prospective assassin is. To complicate things, Captain Seguero is pursuing Milly and getting very suspicious. Wormwold meets Carter, apparently a rival vacuum cleaner salesman, on the plane from Jamaica.

Seguero and Wormwold face off for a game of draughts (checkers) using whisky and bourbon miniatures as pieces, and every time you take a piece, you have to drink it.

Enough plot spoilers.

The British establishment in Whitehall are realised perfectly. There are some memorable lines. When Hawthorne is trying to recruit Wormwold, and when Wormwold is trying to recruit Cuban agents, the scenes take place in the gents toilet. Every one knew about Noël Coward’s sexuality and they milk the scene.

Hawthorne: Where’s the gents?
Wormwold: Through there.
Hawthorne: You go in there and I’ll follow you.
Wormwold: But I don’t need it.
Hawthorne: Don’t let me down. You’re an Englishman, aren’t you?

There’s more. It’s repeated with Wormwold and a shocked Cuban engineer. It’s very funny.A later exchange with Seguero:

Seguero: The engineer is not of the torturable class.
Wormwold: Are there class distinctions in torture?
Seguero: Some people expect to be tortured. Others are outraged by it. One never tortures ecept by mutual agreement.

There are a few suspect bits. I don’t think British European Airways flew around the Caribbean, nor did a Vickers Viscount normally do Transatlantic flights.

It is rentable on Amazon Prime (£3.49) but I warn that it has no subtitles, they speak fast in that clipped 50s British actor style, and it sounded much clearer on my computer speakers than it did on my high quality 5.1 surround system … it is an old sound track, and film to old-fashioned 625 line British TV played at 25 frames a second, when it was filmed at 24 frames. So it is seen 4% faster. you normally really can’t perceive that, and modern remastering in digital corrects that. I’d say this has not been remastered for digital. However it’s worth watching.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

The Six Five Special (1958)
Our Man in Havana (1959)
A Taste of Honey (1961)
The Frightened City (1961)
The Young Ones (1962
Some People (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
The Carpetbaggers (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
The Party’s Over (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Catch Us If You Can (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Ten Little Indians (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Nevada Smith (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Custer of The West (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Take A Girl Like You (1970)
Performance (1970)
Oh, Lucky Man! (1973)