Guinness is on form in this often outrageous tale of misinformation

TheNorthernMonkee

SPOILERS It's amazing what fame can do to someone's life. As an actor in particular, a major role in a blockbuster film can either reintroduce people to your earlier works, or it can lead to years of being recognised for nothing else but that one major event. Sir Alec Guinness before he died was well aware of how a part in an important film can change peoples perceptions of you. Often cursing and swearing about his role in 'Star Wars', it's not difficult to see why Guinness would be so upset. Producing many amazing films over a movie career spanning half a century, Guinness will be remembered by many people for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Guinness hated this, and rightfully so. When a man stars in so many good films, including 'Kind Hearts and Coronets', 'The Ladykillers' and this one 'Our Man in Havana', it must be so infuriating for so many to know him as a Jedi Master.

In 'Our Man in Havana', Guinness is on superb form. Constantly hilarious, he brings life to the character of Jim Wormold and takes the audience along for a ride they're sure to enjoy. Helped by an outstanding script and the magnificent Noel Coward, this is one of Guinness' more underrated performances.

Jim Wormold (Guinness) is a vacuum cleaner salesman in pre-Castro Cuba. Meeting Hawthorne (Coward), Wormold agrees to work for British Intelligence so that he might look after his daughter Milly (Jo Morrow) better. Faking contacts and secret weapon images, Wormold is happily earning lots of money when things begin to go wrong. As British Intelligence agencies begin to take his work seriously, as do their enemies spies and soon Wormold is a wanted man, dead or alive.

Packed full of classic lines and moments (a 'Made In Japan' moment bringing particular pleasure), 'Our Man in Havana' is an entertaining affair with countless different twists and turns on route to it's eventual conclusion.

Helped primarily by an on form Guinness, the film is expertly written by Graham Greene, delivered by Carol Reed and consistently enjoyable. The beautiful images of Cuba equally poignant since Fidel Castro would side with Russia not long afterwards and the Western world would be cut off from these views.

The film also thrives on the fact that particular scenes are helped by the lack of colour. In recent years there are scenes in films which have lost their intensity due to the wrong tones. Realised by men like Robert Rodriguez (in 2005's 'Sin City'), black and white is fast becoming popular again and it's not difficult to see why. One scene in 'Our Man in Havana' uses the lack of colour to particular effect when Guinness' character finally takes a stand and resolves the life and death struggle with Paul Rogers character. Colour could have been used (Guinness featuring in multiple shades in 'The Ladykillers' from four years earlier), but for one reason or another 'Our Man in Havana' stuck to the traditional monotone. This was the right decision to make because it's questionable whether the film's tension could have been so good otherwise.

Led from the front by Alec Guinness, 'Our Man in Havana' is a superb piece of cinema. Entertaining and enjoyable throughout, it is brilliantly written and has you laughing from start to finish. It must easily rank up there along with other Guinness greats, and it is easily one of his more under rated films.

score 8/10

TheNorthernMonkee 10 August 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1147330/