Spycraft and its misuse is all jaunty and jolly, Guinness properly hapless, Kovacs comically lecherous and menacing and Coward a dapper parody of the overdressed undercover agent, strutting about with cane and hat, often accompanied by a street band (The Buena Vista Social Club in their youth?).Īnd then the guns, the poison and the “accidents” crop up and the “innocent fun” curdles. The casting of Alec Guinness, Noel Coward, Ernie Kovacs, Burl Ives, Maureen O’Hara, Ralph Richardson and Noel Coward at his drollest certainly lend “Havana” a comical air that sits lighter on the memory than the murders and sinister turn things take. And the memory is colored by all the versions of “civilian recruited as spy” films inspired by it, especially the screen version of John LeCarre’s homage to “Havana,” “The Tailor of Panama.” But “quite” carries a lot of baggage in that sentence. You tend to forget how dark “Our Man in Havana” is.Ĭarol Reed’s film of Graham Greene’s “comic” spy novel is no “Ugly American,” to be sure, and was never quite as sadistic as the early James Bond movies it was compared to as they came out.
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