Review of Our Man in Havana (1960) by Dustin G — 16 Aug 2011

I love Carol Reed and his other two adaptations/collaborations with Graham Greene (The Third Man and The Fallen Idol) are amazing, near flawless pieces of classic cinema. Our Man in Havana definitely has some great stuff in it, but ultimately falls short of those other two.

The story is fun and interesting, an English vacuum cleaner salesman living in Cuba with his attractive daughter is approached to be a spy for the English government. But, unable to recruit fellow spy's, or come up with any useful intel, he fabricates things to point where London see him as their best spy and send along help from headquarters, at which his house of lies inevitably comes crashing down around him.

For the most part it's pretty far fetched stuff and I found it very difficult to keep ahead of what was going on. I felt like I kept missing major plot points and there were many instances, especially towards the end, that didn't make sense, or weren't explained properly.

The acting's quite good. Though Alec Guinness is a little too refined and proper to be entirely convincing as a poor vacuum cleaner salesman.

The difficulty of following the story, the various unexplained happenings and the overly cheesy, cop out feeling ending are what hurt my experience of the film. But when it makes sense and is easily followable, it's a lot of fun and features that great Carol Reed direction, with the tall shadows, tilted angles and wet, reflective cobblestone streets that feature in many of Reeds greatest works.